


ricochet, take your aim

by Hari_Aisu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, CreeperBros!Derek Hale/Sheriff Stilinski, Derek/John BrOTP 5EVA, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Hospitalization, Internal Victim Blaming, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Illness, Mental Illness Comparison, POSSIBLE TRIGGERS AHOY!, Psychology stuff like woah, Self Harm, So much Bromance in this fic..., Sterek Established Relationship, Stiles needs a hug damn it, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-27 19:49:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hari_Aisu/pseuds/Hari_Aisu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In John’s mind, it had all started with a pill. </p><p>No, actually it had all started with the mood shifts, the irrational anger, the hyperactivity, the over-indulgence and the inability to stay in one place at one time but Sheriff John Stilinski liked to pretend that it had all (very conveniently) started with a pill. </p><p>For both Stiles and Gwendolyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue: suffer now (suffer then)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure all the tags serve as a good enough warning but I want to re-iterate that if you feel uncomfortable with self-harm, gradual mental digression, abuse of medication and *ahem* child abuse, this might not be your cup of tea. 
> 
> I don't know why I wrote this. Of all the things to introduce myself on AO3 with I chose this. WTF. Stiles I LOVE YOU I SWEAR. 
> 
> Uh... enjoy the prologue?

_her eyes had been a lighter shade of honey brown than his and her smile a tad bit more genuine than his own sarcastic quirk would come to be._

_dimples lined her full lips but were rarely seen in the later days, those full grins evaporating until there was nothing left but pale lines and light wrinkles._

_she had been beautiful once, so full of life._

_but when he thought back on her image, that last photographic memory he had of her…_

_it was her hands that made him remember._

_her hands that always made him just a bit more bitter about the memory._

_once firm and loving, they had quickly become mottled with bruises and prominently bonier, their skin going from a milky white to a near translucent shade of nothing but blood vessels and bones._

_his dad had said that he inhabited both the best and worst qualities of his mother._

_he wouldn’t see it until he was strapped in a hospital bed and doped up on sedatives though…_

_because for all her faults, the only ‘worst’ he could think of was her confined into a hospital bed staring at nothing but empty space._

 

* * *

 

 

When Sheriff John Stilinski first met Gwendolyn, it was not, as most people would assume, love at first sight.

In fact, the blond man, then not even a rookie in the Beacon Hills police force, couldn’t stand the woman.

She was loud, pushy, obnoxious and had a retort for just about everything you had to say (most of which didn’t even make sense in pertinence to what people would be talking about at the time).

Basically, she was Stiles if Stiles bled once a month and had an operating vagina.

John had tried to avoid her at first, not really sure why their friends kept pushing them together. One minute she would be calmly murmuring to herself about something or another and the next she would be rambling about the affects of marijuana on animals (what?), what need was there for shoe polish because honestly all shoes were made for walking and no one could walk without scuffing their shoes, honestly what were people thinking (once again, what?) and how fascinating the interior of the club was, didn’t you think?

John literally had no answer for any those questions and he didn’t think he was meant to either.

They eventually became friends (somewhat) and he got used to her miniscule attention span and lack of brain-to-mouth filter. Gwendolyn usually did and said things with the best of intentions but yielded very little good results, being one of those ‘well, you get an A for effort’ type of people. It wasn’t her fault that she was clumsy and often too talkative for most folks. Gwen (as she preferred to be called) couldn’t help herself most times and often suffered as a result of another person’s callousness.

Under her tough as nails personality was a fragile personality that obsessed over every little thing and sure enough he was the one who often took the brunt of these uncharacteristic (at the time) lows that could last for days, weeks at a time.

  
Sheriff Stilinski (still just a young fledgling officer back then) hadn’t known that this wasn’t just a temporary thing, these depressions.

Or that Gwen wasn’t the only one who would come to suffer them.

 

* * *

 

“Hey dad!” Stiles grinned as the tired Sheriff opened his bedroom door, the younger boy pulling down his laptop before the images on the screen could be seen by the older man. “Home early for once I see. How was work?”

John stared at his son, lined blue eyes squinting with newfound suspicion. “Ok… not that I’m expecting an answer, but what did you do?”

“What, me?!” Stiles made a face so similar to Gwen’s own ‘what the hell did I do?’ face that John almost backed down. Almost. “I ask about your wellbeing and all of a sudden I’m guilty of something? That’s got to be a new level of cold pop-pop.”

John’s eyes furrowed even further. “You haven’t called me that in years. Now you have to tell me or else I’ll be forced to call your school and have them explain to me why my son is suddenly so… accommodating to my needs.”

“So underhanded!”

“Stiles!”

“I may have…” Stiles began to fidget with the zipper of his hoodie as his gaze shifted to every item within his room that was consequentially also away from his father. “Gotten almost suspended today… kind of.”

“Stiles, how the hell do you get ‘almost’ suspended ‘kind of’?!”

“By correcting the teacher in the middle of class and not paying attention to them when they are lecturing you about how correcting them is invalid or whatever… I kind of stopped paying attention once Harris started raising his voice…” Honey brown eyes widened in an attempt to play the innocent card, a card that hasn’t worked in years. “But I didn’t get suspended though! Just… detention for a month. And Harris apparently wants to talk to you. Be careful dad, I am almost positive the man is infected with some sort of stupidity virus.”

“Stiles,” John crossed his arms, Stiles’ twitching fingers now grasping at the pens scattered around his laptop and fiddling incessantly with them “what have I told you about messing with your teachers?”

“Not… to?”

John exited the room with a sigh, arms falling at his sides.

“I’m sorry!” Stiles shouted after his disappearing form. Full lips fell into a crumpled version of a frown, the disappointment hanging off of his father’s form now another thing to add to Stiles’ collection of things to worry and fret about when he actually had the time to. Near silent foot falls coming through his window however caught his incredibly short attention span, brooding eyebrows and stiff leather jackets replacing the vision of his frustrated father very easily.

“Usually I’d say let’s never speak of this again but since you barely speak I feel as if it’s not really all that necessary.”

Derek shrugged as he grabbed a chair and sat next to the spastic teen, watching carefully as the honey-eyed teen flipped the laptop open with a flick of a bony wrist and began explaining in overly-wrought detail why yes, they were dealing with a bunch of a fairies and no that was NOT an euphemism for something else for once.

The parent-teacher “conference” was easily forgotten and his father’s discontented countenance was shoved into the back burner without a second thought.

 

* * *

 

 

_when they had laid her down to rest, stiles had silently promised himself to not end up like his mother._

_to not to feel as if he had something to prove and instead just getting the help he would ever come to need when he needed it._

_his ten-year-old self had made that promise as he held on to his father’s cold hand, wanting to protect what little was left of his father’s happiness. knowing in the back of his mind that this was  
_ his fault _and he was lucky to still have his father at all._

_stiles needed to protect this. this last thing that made him feel as if he could be happy, even if he wasn't.  
_

_he wouldn’t be sad like his mommy was._

_he wouldn’t cry and lash out like she did or hurt the people around her just to make herself feel better.  
_

_he would always be happy and laugh and make jokes._

_stiles would make his dad as proud as he could and never, ever sad._

_he promised this just as his father pulled away from his grip and walked back into the car.  
_

_alone.  
_


	2. don't want to be the blame (not anymore)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad people are enjoying! Hopefully you continue to enjoy! :) Next update should be sometime next week and please, heed all the warnings up top! 
> 
> Even Scott's potato-ness is something worth being warned about. 
> 
> Seriously, I'm not even kidding. 
> 
> Oh God I'd never thought I'd ever think something like that and be serious lol. (Sorry not sorry)

_  
_

There were days when Stiles could sit down and not feel like he was about to vibrate out of his skin.

_his skin, his paper-thin, wasteful skin_

The shifty stares, the fidgety fingers, the rapid thoughts, they were an everyday thing. Some days more toned down than others, but always there. Things he could handle.

There were other days though…

Other days when even his body felt like his worst enemy, let alone his traitorous mind.

Those were the days that even Scott eventually became fearful of. Days where his best friend would hesitate to tread into his domain, always giving Stiles these baleful glares once the snarky comebacks became real jabs and the sarcasm went from playful to hurtful. It wasn’t Stiles’ fault that his best friend was an idiot, really. It wasn’t.

_it wasn’t_

There were days when he couldn’t stand to look at other people and his mind felt like it was shooting thoughts out like rapid fire, barely understandable even to the person having them. The Adderall did nothing for him in those moments, not calming down the succession of words and only dulling his senses so that he did not have the right mind to _say them all out loud_ just like his good ole’ dad wanted. Just like his psychiatrist meant for them to be. Just like everyone preferred.

His bones felt like they were melting out of his body and his eyes ached from the lack of sleep (two, three, four days at a time) and he couldn’t sit still, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t-

_there was too much to keep track off, too much to say, too much to do, what was wrong with everyone did they not understand this?_

And everyone thought he was the crazy, annoying one. But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t.

_it WASN’T_

These were days that Stiles feared. Because when he was ‘normal’ he knew what they would come to mean and how much he hurt (not just himself) and how much he took and took and took without realizing, like _maybe_ he was taking too much or he wasn’t taking enough (like Adderall, why keep taking it, why? It just… it was a waste).  

There were days when Stiles couldn’t live in his own body and all he wanted to do was fly. Fly away, fly so far, until these _things_ would just stop.

There were days when Stiles remembered what it was like to look at this from the outside-in. When he would stare at his mother and wonder why she was the way she was and couldn’t she just get better?

Please?

Those days when he pleaded… those were the days he really missed.

 

* * *

  

“Gwen?”

The young woman stared down at the baby in the crib sleeping fitfully, expression cutely rumpled and slightly red.

“Hun, are you alright?”

Once, twice, three times she blinked but no words came from her lips.

The tiny newborn settled within the crib stirred for a moment.

Gwen felt her hands tighten around the railing of the crib in response but she couldn’t speak.

She wouldn’t.

Could she?

“Gwen, why don’t you go sit down for a bit?”

Amber-colored eyes blinked out of their stupor as a pair of warm hands cradled the young woman’s face and pulled them towards the speaker, John’s forced smile bringing her back to the present.

“What time is it?” Gwen whispered against her husband’s thumb.

John let his smile fall a little, eyes narrowing in worry.

“You don’t know what time it is?” The blond officer spoke slowly, as if getting the words out of his mouth took more effort than he anticipated.

“Is it late?” Gwen chortled. “What time is it?”

Without a second’s hesitation, John grabbed the hand hovering between him and the crib. Gwen blinked once again before staring up at John in complete surprise.

“When did you get home hun?”

John said nothing more, gently leading the confused mother out of the room. Their son continued to sleep contently within his crib, none the wiser.

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t blame his mother for not being normal.

He blamed himself for not being worth more.

For not being able to help her.

For not being the kind of child she could have wanted to keep.

 

* * *

 

  

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” John whispered as he fidgeted in his seat, practically shaking in both fear and delight. Though it had been his own idea, John had not thought that Gwen would take to it the way that she had, eyes lighting up in a way that they hadn’t seen in _years_. “I don’t want you to do this if you don’t think you can handle it right now.”

“I’ll be fine. Mostly. If the doctor approves.” The younger woman’s smile bled with hidden anxiety however, nonchalantly hiding all the frustration and nervousness that John himself could not. “We want a family. This is the only way to get one. Plain and simple.”

“We could… always adopt if the doctor feels this is going too fast. You just started this new medication a couple of months ago.” John whispered against Gwen’s ear, her curly chestnut brown hair tickling the edges of his lips. “I don’t want to push you into anything you may not be ready for. Physically or…”

Gwen’s comforting smile grew cold and unnatural, curved into a fine point at each end of her lips. “John if you finish that sentence you’ll be missing three teeth by the end of it.”

“I’m just…” Blue eyes narrowed at the thought, not sure if his worry would hinder or help his cause at this point. “I want the both of us to be happy… and we can still be happy if you have to keep up with what you’re doing. There are other options to you having a baby.”

“I want to be pregnant.” Gwen murmured, eyelashes fluttering. “I want to give birth to a baby and I want to say it’s ours. Why can’t I have that? Why?”

“Gwen… no one’s saying you can’t.”

“But I have to check with a psychiatrist, and a physician and a therapist… I have to do all these things to make sure that I can pull a poison out of my body that would _kill_ my baby but helps me… think… and feel… and just _be_ …” Delicate hands grabbed John’s own sturdy pair, eyes meeting over them. “I can’t be happy without them. At least, not the kind of happy that’s healthy, that’s what everyone is always telling me. This future baby… I want to have it. _I_ want to have it and I want to _love_ it because I had it and I didn’t need something from some doctor to make me feel better for having it.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Stilinski?” Gwen felt her mouth drop open as the receptionist called them over with a smile. “The doctor is ready to see you now.”

John felt his stomach drop as he nodded. His wife’s mouth barely twitched, all good mood vanishing from her features.

“John?” Gwen whispered against his shoulder, marching as if she were on death row. “Please don’t try to take this moment away from me John. Please… not when I already know that I’m going to have to convince everyone and their mother that this isn’t a big mistake in the making. Be on my side, smile when I look at you and think this is a good idea too.”

The young officer nodded as the entrance door was closed behind them with a loud click, not knowing what to feel at this point.

 

* * *

 

 

There were happy memories.

There were times when both he and his mother would be astronauts floating on the moon, looking for a giant piece of moon rock to send back home to dad.

There were times when they would be on a spaceship and had to think fast and keep on track or else the space pirates would come zooming in and capture them all.

There were so many cookies and cakes and brownies, enough to feed an entire army but what usually went to Stiles’ own appetite.

And then there were the less than stellar ones.

Like how he broke his arm when he was four.

Things like that happen the doctor told his mother and father. Kids get up to no good all the time.

And Stiles, he was so energetic! He could barely keep his attention on one thing for more than five minutes at a time and the world was so big, how was he expected to just tone everything down and keep to himself when there was so much to explore?

Or when he got food poisoning when he was five.

His mother was so forgetful at times.

She didn’t mean to mix up the ingredients for his favorite cake.

Things like that... happen.

Or when he cracked his head open on the basement floor after falling down the stairs.

And couldn’t get out because the door somehow locked after he fell on the first step.

He remembered bleeding and crying and screaming for help…

Mommy…

Help.

There were so many memories.

He tried not to think about it too much.

 

* * *

 

 

“So on a scale of one to so angry he’ll start pissing on my carpet what level of psychotic do you think he’ll be hovering over?” Stiles spat out on the phone, fingers clenching and unclenching against the phone’s tiny frame. His legs were twitching even as he paced up and down his carpet, eyes wide and rimmed red.

“Stiles,” Scott comfortingly murmured into his ear “you almost got yourself eaten by a fairy. How angry do you think he’ll be?”

“Ha… did you even say that with a straight face? _Eaten_ by a _fairy_?! You couldn’t even _try_ to find a better way of saying that without making it sound like I was about to get sexed up by some twink?!”

“Dude… I won’t lie, I smiled for a second but that’s it, I swear! And c’mon, you know that the puns and stuff are usually up your alley and not mine. I just… say stuff.”

“Exactly! You’re not the funny one damn it! Leave that to me just like you do everything else!”

“Right, ok. Bye Stiles! Try not to get killed by Derek while you be all… funny and stuff!”

“Damn it!” Stiles threw his phone on the bed and tugged at his short cinnamon-colored locks, frustrated beyond belief. He barely had enough time to do an about-face to begin his awkward pacing again before he was swung around by a forceful grip on his bicep and pushed up against his bedroom wall, two swirling pools of red death glaring at him with a ferocity that alarmed Stiles more than what he was expecting.

“Oh, a wall! How original!” Stiles rolled his eyes as the arm pushing up against his throat threatened to cut off his circulation. The growl that echoed within the room did nothing to intimidate the college student. Instead, he snickered in an effort to steady his heartbeat and try to think his way out of his current situation. “Next you’ll throw me against, let me guess, the OTHER wall! And we’ll start this process all over again! Really… I just can’t wait.”

“Why must you be so juvenile!” Derek’s red-rimmed eyes began to burn even brighter, the anger written all over his face. “You almost got yourself killed! Again!”

“How is it you know how to exclaim things but not ask questions?”

“Stiles!” Derek practically yelled in the younger boy’s face. “Focus!”

“You can’t stop me from doing what I do best ok!”

“Being a menace to society you mean.” Derek snarled inches away from Stiles’ lips.

“Generally,” Stiles grinned, “yes.”

“This isn’t a laughing matter. None of your jokes are of any use here.” Derek’s face morphed into an expression of distant anguish. “When are you going to get it? If something happened to you… You’re not the one who has to pick up the pieces Stiles. You aren’t fucking infallible. Getting in the line of fire isn’t what we need you for!”

“Of course I’m not infallible, hello, human?! I get broken far easier than you, hence my ‘hit and OMG GTFO’ routine.”

“And yet you act as if _you’re_ the one who can regenerate in seconds. As if _you_ can withstand a fucking blow to the head better than I can when I’m made for it. You can barely walk without constantly being in hazard of breaking your damn neck.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” Stiles said nothing about the arms slowly backing away from his windpipe and snaking down his torso to meet at his waist. Those bright crimson eyes were smoldering down to their original hazel green, still agitated enough to emanate a dim glow but stable enough to keep in color. “I know I’m practically live bait on a damn stick but you’re an idiot if you think that you can stop me from helping when things get crazy. If not for me you and Scott would have been decimated ten times over by now. And I’d rather not be responsible for charred up werewolf remains should things become cray-cray and Stiles-Mother-Fuckin’-Stilinski wasn’t there to save your wolfy-asses.”

“You’re not the end-all, be-all Stiles.” A cold nose hit the juncture of Stiles neck. To his credit he only shivered a little bit. Only a little damn it. “If you think I want your ass to be roasting instead of mine you must be an idiot. Nice phrase by the way asshole.”

“Uh, in my defense I didn’t really see the possible offense until after I opened my damn mouth and decided that that was what I was going to go with and nope I didn’t think that through at all, not one bit.” And there was the teeth. Against his neck. Damn it why did his attention span have to turn on him on the worst possible moments?! Because Derek damn him would know exactly how to ply him until he got what he wanted and that would be-

“I don’t want you to do this again,” The smooth tenor rumbled against the pale throat speckled sporadically with moles. “I want you to be safe and still able to make your stupid one-liners and awkwardly placed jokes that are not the least bit funny. I want you to still want me when things like this end and not have to deal with the aftermath of situations like this that only piss me off and make you all… static.”

“Static, huh? Never heard it described quite like that before.”

“But that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s like you’re all… hyped up. Even more. Than usual.”

“How do you even punctuate Derek?”

“Stiles, focus damn it.”

“I am! I swear! Ow, that hurts you jack-ass! Wolf-ass! Jack-Wolf-a-Mother fuck that fucking hurts you dick!”

“Then focus!”

“I am focusing with the power of a thousand burning suns now stop gnawing on my damn neck or you will be on the receiving end of a LOT of dog jokes in the future… in front of the pack… in EXPLICIT DETAIL.”

“Damn it Stiles!”

“You rang?”

A fist came flying just a hair’s breath away from Stiles’ cheek, connecting with the wall with such force that if his father were home Stiles had no doubt that he would come running with gun in hand, ready to shoot first and ask questions later.

Derek the dick knew this and smirked, also knowing that for all intents and purposes that no his father _wasn’t_ here and he couldn’t save Stiles from the mauling that would be in his future if he continued to sass the crap out of his boyfriend/mortal enemy of the moment.

Whether it would be a good mauling or not was still up in the air at this point.

Kind of.

“Why do I even put up with your antics?” Derek’s rhetorical (he hoped it was rhetorical damn it) question hung in the air, the airy quality in his voice belying the flexing fist still nestled against the wall. The older werewolf’s face was still half smushed between Stiles neck and shoulder, not really making the words all that distinguishable at this point.

“Am I more than you bargained for yet?” Stiles whispered against the werewolf’s shoulder, leather hard and sticky against his moist forehead. The fist planted against the wall fell away at the words. The 18-year-old college student shivered as the rough palm crept under his tee-shirt and caressed the skin there.

“Not yet.” Green eyes closed, eased by the beating pulse thrumming faintly against the indent where shoulder meets neck. “But you always like to test me and get pretty damn close.”

“That’s what I do,” bright amber-colored eyes fluttered, lashes tickling the v-neck of Derek’s collar. “It’s what I’m good at too.”

“A little too good.”

“Hey!”

“Please, just… be careful.” Derek pleaded one last time.

Stiles blinked as he looked away from the face inches away from his own, not sure what to say other than-

“Ok.”

 

* * *

 

 

In the end, it came down to what he chose to keep and what he chose to throw away.

He chose not to remember the times she forgot about him because it made it easier to remember that she had loved him… at one point at least.

He chose to remember that she had given up everything to have him because it made him feel special, like he mattered to someone once upon a time and not for the sole obligation that he was all that was left… but because he had been worth _sacrificing_ for.

His mother’s memory was stained with so much negativity… for more than just what she would eventually become. Never once did Stiles blame her for the harsh words and thrown glasses and shattered bones. He would remember the quiet words of ‘neglect’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘unstable’ being whispered into white rooms with disdain because she truly hadn’t been any of those until the bitter end.

There was a reason hospitals scared him.

There was a reason taking his medication irked him.

But he couldn’t let it get to him, like it did his mother.

That was another thing she gave him.

A reason to keep going even when things looked grim.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles grabbed his sweater and stuffed his bandaged arms into the arm sleeves as quickly as possible, heavy steps reverberating through the hallway and headed straight to his room. He managed to pull the hoodie over his head and jump onto his bed as nonchalantly as possible once his father opened the door without even knocking, tired and long-winded after an exhausting night out on the prowl.

“Hey,” John muttered as he entered the room, eyes tired and blackened with exhaustion “how was your night kiddo?”

“It was alright.” Stiles smiled, fidgeting with the sleeves of his massive hoodie. “I got a lot of stuff done last night. Getting ready for a big mid-term coming up and all… gotta love college right?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to live on campus.”

“Pfft… yeah. No thanks.” Stiles smile turned sharp. “I doubt I could find a roommate who could tolerate me for more than week before they spazzed out and opted for a switch. I’m good where I am dad. Unless me being here bugs you?”

“Of course not.” John’s response reflected the sincerity distilled on his face, bright and clear. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you to tell you the truth.”

Stiles grin eased back to its regular quirky nature, bright eyes shining with happiness.

John felt something in him snap as he stared at the familiar grin and familiar eyes and damn it, _that face_ …

He needed a drink.

Or two.

“You know I love ya kid.” A pat on the back and a half an arm squeeze later and John hurried his way out of the room and down the stairs, not able to gaze down at the too-familiar face for a second longer.

He knew it wasn’t Stiles fault that he looked so much like his mother.

Gwen had loved it once upon a time.

Those pretty features had been everything she wanted, to show the world that she was a mother and that boy, that boy was _hers_.

John kept his mouth shut as he carefully poured a glass of scotch, not even hesitating as he listened to a pair of feet quietly make their way across his son’s room, already laying down on the couch and staring at the picture on the wall.

Gwen’s smile reflected back at him, reminding him that if he wasn’t careful, he’d lose what little was left of his son and be left with what little was left of _Gwen_ instead.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles hated the spurts of activity and the boundless energy because on other people it was wanted and in him it was aggravating and brought out what everyone thought was the worst in him.

He wanted to be normal but he wasn’t.

But he didn’t blame his mother.

The only person he really ever blamed in the end was himself.

 


	3. i'm just dreaming (of tearing you apart)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! Wooo! Next chapter, which will be Derek's POV, should be out by Monday or Tuesday! Enjoy you guys!

Scott liked to call them his “don’t wanna talk about it, STFU AND GTFO” days.

Those were the days that Stiles couldn’t (not wanted to, _couldn’t_ ) get out of bed and felt as if his whole world was falling apart. There was no point in facing anybody or doing anything during these days and honestly, even his father hated interacting with him during these times.

He hated the whole world and the whole world hated him back.

Plain and simple.

At least he hated it when he had the energy to do so, which sadly enough produced some of his better moments during those mostly painful times. Often times he couldn’t even muster the will to even look at someone let alone proclaim how much he _hated_ them.

The first time Derek found him like that had been a nightmare for both of them.

But unlike Scott and his father, he didn’t leave him alone.

He was still trying to figure out if that had been a good thing or not.

 

* * *

 

 

“Gwen.”

Hazel brown eyes narrowed as the young pregnant woman burrowed deeper within the covers.

John felt his patience snap at the deliberate ignorance, stomping out of the room without another word.

Gwen flinched as the front door snapped shut. The tears that had been clinging to her lashes ran down her cheeks, the hand underneath the blanket caressing her expanded stomach as a source of comfort.

She decided that staying in bed would probably be best for the rest of the day.

John didn’t come home that night either.

 

* * *

 

 “Stiles.”

Derek couldn’t even see the golden brown eyes of his boyfriend over the mountain of covers. Little peaks of thin fingers poked over the edges of the covers as if trying to secure their clothed fortress.

Unfortunately for Stiles, the werewolf in the room did not have time for his bullshit.

“HEY!” Stiles screeched as the blankets were ripped from his hands, palms red and burning. “I’m not in the mood for your crap today Derek!”

“Funnily enough that’s what I was just thinking. About _you_.” The green-eyed Alpha glowered down at the unaffected teenager still sprawled out on the bed, indifferent to the werewolf’s anger. “I texted you. Seven times. In the last three hours. And you are in bed. What are you even doing.”

“Go away.”

“No.”

“Leave me alone.”

“No.”

“Can’t you leave me in peace?!”

“No.”

Stiles stared up at the sourwolf still stationed next to his bed, eyebrows downturned in a peculiar fashion that had Stiles wondering if they would actually stick that way for once.

“What do you need me to do?” Stiles sighed awkwardly, body protesting as he made his way out of the wonderful treasure that was his bed.

“Get up and put some pants on for a start. I doubt I have much use for you with your dick ready to say hello to me at a moment’s notice.”

“Don’t hate on this cock, Der-Der, you know you love it.”

“Shut up Stiles.”

 

* * *

 

 Derek was a big reason that his worst days weren’t really that bad anymore.

He remembered how his father would react to his mother’s ‘bad days’ and how frustrated and angry he would be, how much he would internalize all of that agitation and let it fester into a ball of disappoint that became a well of indifference to what his mother would do (and eventually the things Stiles would come to do).

That was the second mistake that John Stilinski made in his relationship with Gwendolyn.

And what Stiles would come to learn to be the defining staple within his parent's relationship.

 

* * *

 

 Stiles had a strict NO ZOMBIE/DEADITE/WALKER/WHATEVER THE FUCK PETER IS BUT NOPE DO NOT WANT IN MY VICINITY KTHXBAI ALLOWED WHEN STILES IS RESEARCHING SHIT UP policy whenever he went to Derek’s apartment because of whatever werewolf shenanigans had him holed up researching and basically being the Google-BAMF of the pack.

Derek however was extremely lenient with this policy and basically let Peter roam at his fucking leisure.

Not like his boyfriend’s discomfort to Peter’s incessant bad/wrong vibes of doom mattered.

Stiles really needed to get a new boyfriend who was not both emotionally crippled and selectively ignorant.

Peter grinned from where he was sitting, brown eyes gleaming brightly for a brief moment.

Stiles licked his lips as he kept his eyes trained on the book in front of him, the computer whirring silently beside him in case he needed the awesomeness that was Google once again. The warm body silently standing against his shoulder was the only reason Stiles could even stand being in the same room as the once-dead werewolf.

The quirk on Peters face said he knew that as well.

“Hm.” Derek murmured as he bypassed Stiles’ personal bubble and tracked the line of print with his index finger.

Stiles was not amused damn it.

“I think we’re definitely dealing with something of Grecian origin.” Pale fingers flicked back the pages, still not deigning to pluck the book out of the younger man’s hands but instead entwining around the slim digits still holding up the volume. “At least that’s what we’re going to have to assume after the fairies. I thought I heard one of them say something about a summon but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure until you told me about the report about the livestock going missing in the next town over.”

“What do you mean?” Stiles felt his eyebrow tick, eyes trying not to stray from the text he was most definitely NOT paying attention to.

“It makes sense. The mazes appearing when we’re all dreaming, getting lost out of nowhere, the strange roars, the feeling of being chased…” Derek drifted off.

“You think we’re dealing with a Minotaur now?” Peter asked, eyebrows rising.

“This is why having a bestiary would be a good idea…” Stiles murmured behind the book.

“Yes, but something like that still needs a master to reign it in.”

“So one of our fairy friends must still be out and about.”

“Great,” Stiles muttered as he closed the book, eyes narrowed in agitation “as if almost getting eaten by one of those bastards wasn’t bad enough now they’re mind-fucking us with man-bulls.”

“I’ll get Boyd and Isaac and we’ll do a preliminary search in the woods for any strange looking trees or… man… bulls.”

“It hurt a little just saying that didn’t it?”

“Shut up Stiles.”

“Have fun,” Peter smirked as Derek marched out of the living room, already in Alpha Wolf ‘Time to Fuck Shit Up’ mode. Stiles hurriedly grabbed his things and shoved them into his book-bag, already knowing that he wasn’t going to get out unscathed-

“Why the rush Stiles?”

From Peter’s unruly sass.

“Well I try to keep my distance from things that go bump in the night… particularly re-animated things that go bump in the night that don’t know how to keep their creepy asses dead and buried.” Stiles snapped back. “Hey, look at that. That includes _you_.”

“Don’t be all shy now snookums.” The devilish grin slithering across his lips gave Peter’s handsome features a distinctly fearsome façade. “I love it when you get feisty, gets me all hot and bothered.”

“Your body still has a core temperature above ‘Dead as Ice’? Wow, who knew that corpses still had that ability! You learn something new and fascinating every day.” Stiles hefted his bag over his shoulder, trying to shuffle out of the room with the last word intact. Before he could make it to the door however, Peter was standing in front of it, eyes glowing with malice.

“You haven’t been hanging around Scott as much as you used to Stiles. What, has the spark burnt out now that Derek’s come into the picture?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Yet true nonetheless.” Peter smirked.

“I don’t need your opinion on what it takes to keep the spark alive. Get it? Alive? Ha.” Stiles felt his heart begin to race as he pushed his way to the door, flinching only when a cold hand caught his wrist. Peter’s eyes sparkled as he brought Stiles’ wrist to his nose and scented the skin just above the wildly beating pulse.

“Yet look at you, still so afraid. Afraid of me or afraid of me being right, I wonder?” Peter dropped the appendage without skipping a beat. “Your little duo turned into a trio but you never said a word against it because you wanted him to be happy and if she made him happy then you could deal with the repercussions. Now that you’re with Derek however things are just a little strained… aren’t they? Things not quite the same with your little bff now that you’re sharing space with someone he still considers an enemy and whom Allison-dear thinks is a monster? Or maybe Scott’s finally figured out who the dead weight is in his little wannabe pack and decided to drop him. Hm?”

The now frozen teen felt his mouth drop alongside his arm as Peter stalked out of the living room, faintly glowing eyes practically dripping with satisfaction. He could tell that the younger man was now over-thinking everything he had just said, twirling every moment since his relationship’s conception to his darling nephew and wondering if all that was said was true or not.

Really, his job here was done.

 

* * *

 

 

The problem wasn’t that Stiles was inattentive.

It was true that he was spastic and easily distracted but when it came to his relationships… they were his world.

Scott, despite being his best friend (only friend) for so many years, didn’t realize how needy Stiles was when it came to their friendship. Scott himself was pretty needy himself but Stiles indulged his whims every time so Scott never understood what it was to feel neglected by the only person you had come to lean on. Their friendship was built on Stiles’ need for attention and Scott’s need for constant re-affirmation and though Stiles didn’t always get the attention he wanted he got enough to get by.

But now, things were different.

Stiles didn’t get Scott when he wanted him most of the time.

Not even _some_ of the time.

In fact, Scott had collected himself his own harem of “friends” to go to now that he was part of the wolfy persuasion. Stiles wasn’t even his first choice friend anymore. He’d be lucky if he was part of the fav-five (unless it was research-supernatural-adventure-time, then Stiles was the ONLY choice by default).

His best friend was slipping through his fingers and Stiles didn’t know what to do about it.

Being with Derek only appeased a part of the problem. Derek didn’t really cater to his every social need (pfft. What was that again?) and the friends he made while at college didn’t ( _couldn’t_ ) understand any of his life choices.

They all still thought Derek was his sugar daddy who had a strange fetish for men who looked like pre-pubescent boys. If only they knew about the lack of homes and money Derek was packing… yeah, that thought would turn into ‘Oh my God, what is wrong with you?!’ instead of  the usual ‘What the hell is wrong with _him_?’.

It was hard not having the person he thought would always have his back, especially when he was at his lowest.

Scott was voluntarily drifting away from him and Stiles honestly had no idea how to sway him back.

 

* * *

 

 He had known that his sarcasm would turn against him one day damn it. Hell, he knew the moment that the words had escaped his lips that they were the wrong thing to say at the wrong damn time and he would pay dearly for his big mouth and how it was always flapping at the worst times. He had known that he shouldn’t have provoked the damn chanting fairy again but damn it, he was just asking for a sassing.

Seriously.

_Seriously._

Unfortunately the large slash across his abdomen and multiple wounds now decorating his body were not basking in the victory of his sassiness.

On the bright side he could definitely assure Derek that they were dealing with a damn Minotaur.

Honestly, DEM HORNS.

NOT FUN.

AT ALL.

Stiles was pretty sure that his body was now rebelling against him in a show of blatant ‘why must you be so _you_ FUCK YOU STILES WE DON’T LIKE YOU ANYMORE SO PFFT!’.

Snowy flakes clung to lengthy lashes as they tipped back a bit further, golden brown eyes glistening even as the lids shielding them fluttered at the sensation of cold water catching from time to time. Stiles could barely move even as the stinging wind whiplashed around him, the cuts and bruises scattered across his body doing more to keep him where he was than anything else.

How the college student was even on his feet and not sprawled on the ground was a good question that Stiles could only answer with the strength of sarcasm and perseverance.

Scott didn’t even think to turn his head and check on his friend, having fled from the scene as soon as Allison’s scent hit him like a sack of rocks.

Stiles didn’t exactly blame his best friend for his condition (that was all Stiles) or even his neglect (that, unfortunately, was actually Scott). The were-boy was still just that; a boy. Though they both grew up without a parent, it was Stiles that had had to grow into the adult that Scott still wasn’t. Impulsiveness aside, Scott knew that Stiles was secretly a step ahead of almost everyone and willing to do what needed to be done to keep those he cared for out of harm’s way.

However using himself as distraction probably wasn’t the best of ideas and it was getting a bit hard to walk…

Stiles sure hoped that Derek wasn’t in the area and was doing reconnaissance in a different part of the forest because he was going to _kick Stiles’ ass_ and then _kick Scott’s ass for leaving him here by himself damn it!_

‘Jeep, jeep, get to the jeep…’

Slumping forward was something that Stiles was good at and he would be damned if he didn’t at least faint/die in the comfort of his own damn home.

 

* * *

 

 

The scariest thing Stiles could think of wasn’t wondering whether or not this battle would be his last. He didn’t have use for that type of fear. For worrying about something that he couldn’t control. 

No.

It was always about who he could save.

Or couldn’t in some cases.

It was frightening having a best friend who would gladly put his hand in the fire for some random stranger that didn’t give two shits about you. It was terrifying having a parent that was paid to continuously put himself in danger on a daily basis, regardless of whether that danger was something he knew about or not. It was maddening to love someone who’s first inclination was to march off into battle and damn the consequences if he was killed in the process.

Stiles was the wall between his loved ones and death and that above all else _killed_ him.

Everyone had their fears, their lows, their worst’s.

He couldn’t think of anything worse than being alone.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles managed to make it home.

Barely.

But still.

Really.

Derek stared down at the young man on the floor, his glare promising death and destruction to all who entered.

Or.

Whoever had done this thing where his body was mangled and twisted but who cares because everything was rainbows and nothing hurt, NOTHING DAMN IT!

God he felt so buzzed…

“I can taste your worry and it’s makin’ me wanna lick you.” Stiles grinned dopily as the older man rolled his eyes, hands wrapped around the cloth encasing the teen’s wrists and wrenched them away from the fragile skin and bone with an air of definite pissed-off-ness that was above anything Stiles had ever seen. The scrunched up ‘v’ now invading Derek’s forehead alluded to his broody sentiment, man-pain at epic levels.

It made Stiles want to hug him. With his legs. Around his face.

What?

 Oh.

Awwwwkward boner.

“Stiles. Stop. Giggling.”

“I like it when you make me get boners.”

“…”

“… I didn’t say that in my head did I?”

“I’ll chalk this up to the poison running in your blood stream. I just. I can’t. Stiles. Stop nudging me with your hips. STILES STOP.”

“Ooooooops. AWKWARD BONER!”

“STILES!”

“WHAT?!”

“You are poisoned, bleeding and nearly comatose. What the fuck were you thinking going to meet up with the damn fairy by yourself?!”

“I wasn’t by myself!” Stiles protested sedately. “I was with Scott.”

“Exactly. By yourself damn it.” Derek didn’t even strain himself as he hefted the younger man up into his arms and began swearing under his breath. “What the hell was Scott thinking leaving you alone like this?!”

“He heard Allison… or smelled her… Allison-ness… and was ZOOOOOOM!” Stiles giggled in Derek’s ear. His arms made it around his boyfriend’s neck though they lay awkwardly, as if they were unable to do much more than sit where they were. “I wanna kiss your veins and pet your eyebrows. Your eyebrows lurrrrve meh.”

“Oh my God.” Derek furrowed said eyebrows.

“I luffles you eyebrows!” Stiles screeched as he was practically thrown in the backseat of the Camaro, sluggishly folding his legs up so Derek could close the door without causing anymore pain to his body.

Because.

Pain was bad.

And Stiles was in pain.

Maybe.

He was still too high to really know for sure.

“I am bringing you to Deaton,” Derek informed the half-stoned 18-year-old in the backseat with a grim monotone that brought Stiles to attention “I am going to get him to fix you. I am going to make sure that nothing bad happens to you. Then I am going to kill Scott and hang his entrails in my living room so everyone knows what to expect when it comes to your well-being. And no, you are not going to persuade me otherwise. Am I clear?”

Stiles blinked as bright hazel-green eyes caught his stare though the rear-view mirror.

“Can I tickle your cheekbones?”

Derek forced himself not to sigh.

He had a feeling he was going to be dealing with this for awhile.

 

* * *

 

 Sometimes, when you think of your lowest days you forget that things could always be worse.

You might think that ‘yeah, that was it. That was rock bottom. It was horrible’. But what does that even _mean_?

Didn’t everyone have a rock bottom then?

Because the more Stiles thought about it, the more he realized that he had reached so many rock bottoms and at the bottom of each one, he had thought that.

This is it.

This is horrible.

There can’t be anything worse than this.

But there was. There were always new levels to what ‘worse’ was. He now knew that there were always new depths to reach and more horrors to fill the gaps between what was good and what was better.

So if that was true…

How did he protect himself for what was coming next?

 


	4. interlude i: you're wrong (are we all wrong?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol I feel like this deserves a FailWolf tag. Oh God Derek WAT R U DOIN. SRSLY. WAT?! 
> 
> Here's a little break from our angst into the courtship of a hyperactive teen as done by a surly Sourwolf with no idea what he's doing or how to do it. Enjoy. 
> 
> (John sure did lol)
> 
> Added Note: These interludes don't actually take place during the story. They are past events that basically lead up to Derek and Stiles' relationship, which is already established within the context of the chapters within the story separate from the interludes! Basically, it's meant to be a rest from the craziness along with a bit of back story. Just so you guys know! :)

When Derek had begun pursuing Stiles he had not expected to be rejected.

In fact, he had not expected that he would have to pursue the younger man at all.

The rugged werewolf was not blind to how he looked and Derek had most definitely caught the long-limbed limpet staring at his muscular form more than once, so it seemed Stiles wasn’t blind to his attractiveness either. And Derek knew that even with the… rocky start their “relationship” had had to sail through, after two years of getting to know each other, fighting monsters together and forging a semi-functional friendship/snark-ship with the former high-school student, that his personality had been accepted for what it was.

Approaching the 18-year-old had been difficult at first but Derek knew that indicating his interest would be the easy part.

Was supposed to be the easy part.

It wasn’t the easy part.

Stiles had given him a strange look and proceeded to pat him on the head as if he were a puppy (as if he were _Scott_ of all people!), making a flippant comment about how weird Derek was being as he walked away from the green-eyed man. Derek had almost grabbed Stiles by the scruff and glared him into accepting his invitation, as if said werewolf hadn’t pushed enough of his pride aside and given the college student a chance to have a choice about the situation and not just out right _demanded_ that he spend the afternoon with him… _or else_.

Stiles had simply made the mistake of making the wrong choice..

Granted, “You aren’t a horrible person to be around all the time. Let’s go get some coffee later and talk about your best friend’s inaptitude when it comes to being a supernatural creature with super powers,” was probably not the greatest pick up line Derek could have come up with, so all in all, things could have been worse.

 

* * *

 

 

The second time he had tried to make his intentions clear was a disaster.

It had involved an enraged selkie.

And a lot of blood.

And Derek almost dying in Stiles’ arms, blabbering nonsense as Stiles attempted to keep Derek’s insides _inside his body_.

They don’t talk about the second time damn it.

 

* * *

 

 

The third time was it.

At least that was what Derek told himself as he stood in front of Stiles’ front door (if that didn’t at least _hint_ at how serious Derek was about this whole situation, he didn’t know what would at this point), fists clenched in nervousness and eyes burning with determination.

When the stone-faced werewolf finally managed to gather enough courage to knock on the door he was faced with not Stiles but John Stilinski’s suspicious visage.

Needless to say third time’s a charm was not part of Derek’s motto that night.

Stiles still refused to let him live down how fast he ran off his porch that night…

Nor did the Sheriff for that matter. Damn Stilinski men.

 

* * *

 

 

After incident’s five, six and seven, Derek was primed to give up.

Attempt five had been hindered by Scott’s needless whining about his and Allison’s breakup of the week. After managing to get Stiles out of the damn house under the guise of needing some new dishes for the newly renovated Hale kitchen (Derek had casually brought it up whilst Stiles had been bored and Stiles being Stiles had jumped at the bait without even the slightest bit of hesitation) disaster struck in the form of 10 phone calls, 16 text messages, three Facebook wall rants and finally a Twitter attack with the hash tag barrage of #Iluvyouallison and #Stilespickupyourdamnphone.

Derek had almost killed the teenage pup on principal alone.

Stiles had then proceeded to apologize and promised to help another time.

The Alpha wolf swore revenge not just on Scott but on Stiles’ damn phone as well.

Six had yielded similar results in the form of Erica and Isaac deciding to crash it.

Seriously.

They had rushed into the living room just as Derek popped in the DVD bearing popcorn and snacks, the smirks on their faces letting the werewolf know that this wasn’t a coincidence.

Derek had not been amused.

Seven, Derek would be the first to admit, had been half-hearted at best.

After a long night of reconnaissance (Stiles would say late night stalking but that was neither here nor there) around the woods for the latest undercover ‘baddie in town’ (obviously Stiles words) Derek had invited the hyperactive teenager over for pancakes and bacon.

Yes.

Pancakes damn it.

With blueberries and everything.

For someone who had not slept in four days and was running on zero it had been a brilliant premise alright?

Stiles had tiredly agreed, smiling so brightly that Derek had to actually take a minute to breathe it all in.

It was working, he thought.

Fuck yeah it was working!

Actually, no it wasn’t.

Halfway into his plate of blueberry pancakes smothered in strawberry sauce, syrup, whipped cream and ice cream (even Derek didn’t know how he stomached it, Dear God How) Stiles began to ramble as he was prone to do.

At first Derek blocked it out.

He was good at selectively picking out what was worth listening to in Stiles’ mile long monologues and what was bullshit. Once he heard the word ‘Friend’ pop up, he knew it was time to listen.

Oh God why did he listen.

“Honestly, I couldn’t ask for a better friend. Scott sucks these days when it comes to, you know, thinking about someone that _isn’t_ Allison. You on the other hand… you deserve a new moniker. Sourwolf is not cognizant of this epic bromance we now share. You’re like the new companion to my scruffy new and still bumbling Doctor! Or the… the Leonard to my Sheldon! I’d even give you Watson to my oh-so-adorable Sherlock! Haha! Oh! We should mash our names together instead and have people refer to us by it… and not respond to anything else. That… that would be awesome. What do you think about Diles? Too much? Sterek? Stale? Halinski? Oh my God, the options are endless. Tell me you have a middle name and we’ll mind-fuck the shit out of everyone by casually referring to the other as that name at the most random times and then dropping it as if nothing was said! I’m genius!”

Derek however chose at this point to blank out into his special place and let his eyebrows do the talking.  

Friendship.

Bromance.

Companion.

Basically: Platonic. Relationship.

**FRIEND.**

Holy shit, Derek had just been practically cast off into the nether realms of friendship and left to rot in unresolved sexual frustration that would amount to nothing but angst and relentless bitterness.  

In other words… he had been friendzoned.

What the hell?

How the _hell_ did _Stiles_ friendzone _Derek_?

THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!

Stiles continued to babble and make jokes while sloppily eating his pancakes and Derek prodded at his own food until it became too cold to eat and threw it away. It looked like it had literally hurt Stiles as he flung the pancakes into the trash but he couldn’t bring himself to care about the heartbroken look on his face.

Without even a second glance back Derek trudged into his room and huddled underneath his blankets to mourn like a 16-year-old teenage girl.

If Laura were around she would shake her head and murmur that things really don’t change even if circumstances do.

 

* * *

 

 

After a week of plenty of unanswered phone calls and text messages Derek figured that Stiles would eventually give up.

There would be no more attempts.

He refused to keep making an ass out of himself and dealing with the oblivious Stilinski.

Derek, however, forgot just how tenacious Stiles could be when left to his own devices.

And that is how Attempt Number Eight was born without Derek even realizing it.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’ve been avoiding me you ass.”

Derek felt his cheek twitch as he looked up at the lithe college student standing directly in his peripheral vision, flushed cheekbones and bright eyes giving him a rather sexed-up flair. The older of the two repositioned himself where he was sitting, not wishing to accidentally give Stiles a visual he didn’t really need or ask for.

“I thought we were getting to be really good friends instead of just weird acquaintances that sometimes save the other’s ass when on the line.” Stiles stated, eyes flaring up even further. “And then all of sudden you shut me out like I’m some kind of diseased leper?! What the fuck Derek?”

“I was busy.” Derek huffed.

“Doing what, chasing rabbits with your werewolf squad? Give me a break Derek!”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you!” Derek finally gave up all pretense of calm and stood up, both men of same height but Derek’s bulkier build giving his physical presence a more formidable edge. “You are not pack and you are definitely not family so stop trying to insinuate yourself into my life!”

“You were the one inviting me into it in the first place you jackass!”

“Obviously that was a mistake and it’s being rectified as we speak, now leave!”

“I’m your friend damn it and I won’t be pushed aside just because something’s wrong with you and you don’t want to talk about! That’s what friends are for Sourwolf!”

Now, Derek wasn’t quite sure what it was that pushed him over the edge.

Whether it be the mounting frustration of attempts one through seven finally catching up to him or the way the word ‘friend’ had poured off Stiles tongue so easily, as if feeling anything more for the green-eyed werewolf was not even a possibility to be thought of.

Hell, it could have been all the unresolved sexual frustration building up in Derek’s body (or mainly one part to be honest) that had caused him to snap but snap he indeed did.

And not in the ‘RAAAAWR I IS GONNA EAT U’ way either.

“MMPH!”

More like in the ‘OMG I NEED TO EAT YO FACE!’ way.

As his actions finally caught up to Derek and he had the good grace to let go of the shell-shocked teen and take a step back, a million and one apologies all ready and raring to be let loose from his lips without any thought about what it was he was actually apologizing for because damn it, that had felt _great_.

Stiles on the other hand took the lead for him and grabbed the Alpha by the collar of his Henley and smashed their lips together with a flail.

“I thought I was your friend,” Derek huffed as he reluctantly broke off the kiss.

“Snarking? Now?! Shut up and kiss me you dumbass!”

Derek was nothing if not a staunch believer of playing it by ear.

You could say that winging it was his forte.

 

* * *

 

 

So when John had asked Derek of all people, why Stiles? Derek had had no idea what the correct answer to that particular question was and whether it was entirely appropriate for his _father_ of all people to be the one to ask Derek, as if the werewolf had any semblance of what was considered normal or practical in life.

His relationship with Stiles had been turbulent and filled with mutual comebacks in the beginning but subconsciously, each of their conversations had been filled with more emotion and sincerity than all of his interactions with all of his pack-puppies (damn it Stiles, now he was saying it too!) combined. Their equaled animosity towards each other had balanced out, cultivating into something else entirely.

Something Derek didn’t find himself hating.

So they had not had a cute first impression story like most people and didn’t have a functional relationship which worked on a ‘normal’ routine like most people strived (and failed) for.

They were Stiles and Derek.

And that worked for them.

For the most part.

But back to the question at hand.

“Uh…” Derek had never thought someone other than Stiles could ever make him become literally speechless.

Never underestimate a Stilinski.

“He’s… not boring?”

John rolled his eyes and pat the younger man on his back.

He was starting to see that maybe it was Derek he should be looking out for and not Stiles.

Poor boy had the defense mechanisms of a stick.


	5. my conscience called (in sick again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You remember how those tags told of all that child abuse? 
> 
> Uh, this is where you start to see it. 
> 
> And peeps goin' crazy. 
> 
> And poor Stiles... 
> 
> I always torture my favorite characters damn it. 
> 
> Bitches be cray-cray y'all. Just sayin'.

When Stiles was just a kid barely over the age of six his mom got sick.

Not _regular_ sick though.

Not the kind that needed chicken soup and some medicine to make it all better.

More like the kind of sick that sticks in your head and rattles your bones until all you feel and think is ‘why me, why is this happening, what’s going on, what am I doing here?’.

And the worst part wasn’t that she got sick.

It was that she let herself get sick to begin with.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles blinked as he stared at the sheets surrounding his mother’s body, milky white and ruffled by the movement of her legs. Her arms, which were strapped down to the bed underneath the sheets, twitched and convulsed from time to time.

Unhealthily thin hands gripped the cloth of the bed.

He could tell by the movements her fingers kept making underneath the covers.

She was so uncomfortable…

Stiles looked up into his mother’s eyes ( _but they didn’t look like his mother’s, not really, not anymore_ ) and felt a surge of strength rise within his chest.

“Dad?” The young boy turned to his father, eyes wide with innocence. “Can you get me some water?”

John barely nodded, rushing out of the room without a word.

He didn’t notice as Stiles’ fingers crept underneath the blanket and gently pulled at the taut leather underneath.

 

* * *

 

 

Even though Stiles knew that his mother had known what she had been doing when she stopped taking her medication that didn’t mean that he hadn’t had hoped for the best.

He had been curious as a child, wondering why his mother had to swallow down those colorful looking pills every morning and every night.

A pill to keep calm.

A pill to help sleep.

A pill for this, a pill for that.

His mother’s cabinet was like a damn pharmacy.

And as a child, he hadn’t had known what it meant.

When he turned ten he had done his fair share of wondering and had finally taken to the internet in terms of looking up what each medication did and what they were made out of.

He had not liked the results.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles remembered hearing Derek screaming into his phone, still huddled awkwardly in the werewolf’s arms. The stream of gibberish that had been spewing from his lips came to a halt as soon as Derek had manhandled the younger man into his arms and attempted to reach for his phone all at once, an action that had caused Stiles to nearly vomit at the sea-sick like motions. The fever that Derek had been worried would overheat his partner began to swelter underneath Stiles’ skin until he decided that clothing was unnecessary and being naked in front of his hysterical Alpha werewolf boyfriend would be a _great_ idea.

Derek obviously was against this plan because of _reasons_.

What reasons Stiles didn’t know but they must’ve been **horrible** ones.

After the first tumble and near crash onto the ground (Stiles was much heavier than he looked for all the lanky jokes he liked to pull out of his ass) as a result of Stiles’ intense need to be nude, the memory became faded and dulled over, the college student’s consciousness meandering into nothing once again.

Stiles tried to speak again but Derek simply held on tighter, the phone in his hands squeaking under the pressure of those strong hands which were growing steadily hairier and were those claws poking out of those nails…?

Well shit.

All Stiles knew was that Derek was here and he was keeping him safe (murderous temper aside) and that somehow made everything much more tolerable.

Well, aside from the excruciating pain, burning hot flashes and urges to scratch his skin until he bled.

That was pretty intolerable no matter who was with you.

“Derek,” the barely conscious amber-eyed teen muttered against the stale taste of dried leather, face mashed against the fabled leather jacket of doom that always hung over his boyfriend’s oh-so-sexy shoulders. “Where ya goin’?”

“We’re going to see Deaton.” Derek stated. “He says he should be able to get most of the poison out of your system. Then, depending on the damage, you might have to rest in order to recover from whatever’s left in your body.”

“Poison?”

“Fairies, Stiles. FAIRIES. What the hell were you thinking taking them on by yourself in the middle of the night? You could have died! _Again_!” Derek deposited his exhausted fool of a boyfriend into the front seat of his Camaro as gently as possible, wincing as Stiles’ head lolled painfully to the side. “Why didn’t you tell Scott you were hurt? Or _call me_ when he left you like the moron he is?”

“Didn’t…”

“Didn’t…?”

Stiles groggily smiled up at Derek. “Didn’t want you to get mad.”

Derek sighed exasperatedly.

“Good job with that one.”

“D-Deaton?”

“Don’t worry,” Derek shifted the gear as soon as he pulled his seatbelt on, “we’ll be there soon.”

 

* * *

 

 

The truth of the matter is, Stiles hadn’t always been hyper.

His father liked to pretend that was the case.

But it wasn’t.

His mother would smile and curl around him, tell him what a good boy he was, how calm and serene he would be as mommy got her things done and that made Stiles happy.

He liked it when his mother was happy.

But there were times when that wasn’t the case even when Stiles was on his best behavior.

Those were the days he would want to run and hide.

But she would catch him every time.

Every single time.

 

* * *

 

 

Large honey-brown eyes fluttered as their owner huddled closer into his own warmth, small body compacted underneath the bed until you couldn’t even see any part of the child at all. The small stuffed animal clutched within his arms squeaked as the young boy pulled it closer to his person, the sounds of garbled yelling and glass breaking reverberating through his door.

Sometimes he liked to pretend that it was the bad guys his father was fighting with when things got like this.

When it got this bad.

It was his own fault. He didn’t blame his mommy for getting angry at him. She had told him not to go outside. But he hadn’t listened. He had wanted to at least feel the fresh air. It had been days since he had gotten to play outdoors.

His mommy said that bad little boys didn’t get to go outside.

He didn’t blame his mommy for getting mad.

He had been bad.

He wouldn’t do it again he had screamed. He wouldn’t be bad again.  

He promised.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles knew that his father was delusional.

At least when it came to facing the truth.

In John’s mind, it had all started with a pill.

No, actually it all started with the mood shifts, the irrational anger, the hyperactivity, the over-indulgence and the inability to stay in one place at one time but Sheriff John Stilinski liked to pretend that it had all (very conveniently) started with a pill.

For both Stiles and Gwendolyn.

But he was wrong.

The one thing he was right about though was that it had all ended in a hospital room with straps let loose and a confused boy on the hospital floor who didn’t know who his mother was anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

“I won’t be able to get it all out of his system.”

Derek stared up at the vet, face pulled into one of his many ‘Don’t fuck with me’ expressions. Instead of looking frightened, Deaton appeared all the more serene, hands soaked in some type of poultice. Stiles flinched as those same hands kneaded his now-infected wounds, puss rolling out alongside the blood seeping onto the table he was laid out upon.

“It was sitting inside him for too long. If he had gotten here as soon as he had gotten infected I would have been able to do more. As it is I’ll only be able to take care of the worst of the damage. You’ll have to take him to the hospital.”

“What?!”

“I’ll heal him myself.”

Both Derek and Stiles spoke at the same time, one in panic and the other with barely veiled concern.

“There’s undiluted wolfsbane in this poison,” Deaton calmly explained as he rolled more of the mold-colored substance over Stiles’ skin. “you won’t be able to heal him with doing incredible damage to yourself. He needs to see a doctor to see the full extent of his damages. I can only take care of the magical portion of the poison, a physician will have to take care of the rest.”

“I’m not that bad!” Stiles spouted from his spot, skin still splotchy with fever and sweat.

“Yes,” Deaton countered swiftly “you are.”

“Derek.” Stiles pleaded quietly. “Please don’t make me go.”

Derek felt his own will crumble at the vulnerability dripping off of his partner’s words but the look in Deaton’s eyes told him that this was much more serious than Stiles realized.

“If Deaton says you have to go to the hospital I have no choice but to agree Stiles.”

Stiles grew eerily quiet after the werewolf’s declaration, eyes shuttered and mouth twisted into a gnarled frown. His hands began to tremble  the longer Stiles stayed quiet, the hisses of pain even dwindling into nothing.

Derek grew fearful at the forced quiet, eyes shifting from Stiles to Deaton in an attempt to figure out whether this was an affect of the poison or something else entirely.

The look on the vet’s face rivaled Derek’s in confusion whilst Stiles grew all the more somber.

Something was most definitely not right here.

And Derek was going to find out what.

 

* * *

 

 

He hated thinking of what a place of healing meant to him now.

It hadn’t been the hospital’s fault that his mother didn’t get better.

The doctors had tried everything they could think of, from force-feeding his mother her medications to trying to send her to new specialists every week.

They had tried.

But she had gone too long without her medication they said.

She didn’t seem to want to get better they said.

Gwen wasn’t responding to any of their treatment they said.

There was a lot they said and little they actually did the closer the clock counted down to Gwen’s final moments and Stiles, poor little Stiles, let his mother walk right into her own death.

 

* * *

 

 

“Gwen?”

‘I love you, I love you, I love you-‘

“Gwen.”

Pale fingers caressed the large bump stretched over their abdomen, dark eyes narrowing up at the man speaking to them.

John sighed as scrubbed at his face, already frustrated and most definitely tired.

“Gwen, you know that you have to go talk to your therapist next week.” John pleaded quietly. “He’s called at least three times in the last two weeks and I know for a fact that you haven’t seen him in at least three. You can’t keep pretending there’s nothing wrong with the way you’ve been acting.”

“I’m fine.” Gwen stated fiercely, hands now hovering over her stomach protectively.

“You know all this stress isn’t good for the baby.”

“I’m not stressed!”

John threw his hands on the table, eyebrows furrowed in frustration. “You almost got yourself fired today! You nearly threw a book at a child! That is NOT like you! And honestly I can’t concentrate on my job if I’m worrying about whether or not my wife’s gone psycho or not!”

“I told you, I’m not crazy!” Gwen began to rock herself back and forth, trembling fingers stroking her sides as she attempted to calm herself. “I just… I’m a little tired. And that kid was being a brat. Who the hell brings a bratty kid to a library? That’s just asking for somebody to throw an encyclopedia at their head.”

“I had to personally promise the Hale family that you wouldn’t try to decapitate their son with no more books in order for them to not press any charges against you, which mind you they are well within their rights to do so. Gwen, you have to go see your therapist. That’s it. No more excuses.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I don’t care, you’re the mother of my child and my wife. You will do this or there will be consequences.”

Gwen stilled as the words filtered into her head.

John wouldn’t-

He wouldn’t.

He _wouldn’t._

“What do you mean by… _consequences_.” Gwen quietly stated, voice devoid of all emotion.

John held his wife’s gaze…

Then slowly let it fall to her midsection.

He didn’t have to say another word.

She made the appointment not even an hour later.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles hoped that when he got older that he would be able to remember a woman that wasn’t always miserable.

Like he said, there were times they were happy. That their family didn’t seem so… detached.  

It’s just that none of those times took place in a hospital.

 

* * *

 

 

Derek sat in silence as he waited for the doctors to finish examining Stiles, not letting him in as soon as they figured out he was neither family nor wedded to the young man. They were quick to notify the sheriff who had let them know that he would be there as soon as he was able and that hadn’t helped Stiles’ anxiety at all, Derek could tell.

He could smell it underneath all the sterile cleaners laden in the hospital hallways, lingering heavily within his nostrils.

The smell of unnerving fear.

Derek’s leg continued to jiggle as he waited for not just the sheriff but for someone else.

Someone who was coming this way now.

“Derek!” Scott hollered as he rushed down the hallways of the hospital, dark brown eyes creased with worry. “What’s wrong with Stiles!?”

“What’s wrong… with Stiles.” Derek murmured quietly. “A lot actually. But let’s start with you.”

“Huh?” Scott yelped as Derek grabbed him by the scruff and practically carried him outside, the nurses looking on conflicted with the urge to intervene and help Melissa’s son and not wanting to get involved with Derek, who they all knew to be some diesel troublemaker who had no boundaries when it came to aggression. “What are you doing?! What about Stiles?!”

“You didn’t seem to care about _Stiles_ when you were running off to see Allison now did you?” Derek threw the younger werewolf out the hospital door, eyes rimmed with red. “Did you not smell the poison running through his veins? The blood pouring out of his body? The infested cuts he carried? Scott, why did you leave him alone? He was wounded and fighting for his life when I found him. He could have _died_ because of _your_ negligence!”

“I didn’t…” Scott blinked, confused and just the slightest bit frightened. He hadn’t realized that Stiles had sustained any wounds after their confrontation with the fairy but it had made sense. The fairy had not really been concentrating on him. Stiles had opened his mouth and diverted it to him (as usual) and Scott had went in for the kill but had missed after getting a whiff of Allison’s scent. After the fae creature had disappeared in a pile of smoke and ash he had ran off to find the beautiful archer, wondering if this time he would be able to articulate how he felt without making an idiot of himself.

But thinking back on the fight he had smelt something strange…

Something that… could have been blood…

“I’m sorry.” Scott whispered as he lowered his head, not so much as a sign of submission to the Alpha but in a sign of penance for his friend.

He knew how much Stiles hated hospitals.

Oh God…

That was fear he smelt, hadn’t it?

“Is he alright?” Scott’s eyes widened as he felt himself go into panic mode, earlier self-pity melting away into shame. “He hates hospitals. You can’t let him stay in there for a long time or he’ll start freaking the hell out!”

“He’ll stay for as long as the doctors tell him to stay.”

“No, you don’t get it, he doesn-“

“Enough!”

Scott froze as Derek’s eyes bled red, the growl in his voice reverberating into the night air.

“He will recover and he will be fine.” Derek promised. “And you will leave and you won’t come back until he tells you otherwise.”

Without another word the older man spun around and stomped back inside the hospital, leaving the Beta wolf with nothing but his own worry to stew in.

 

* * *

 

 

The only person other than his father that knew just how much he hated hospitals was Scott.

Scott had not _seen_ what had become of his mother but he had lived it alongside his best friend. He had watched Stiles change into the boy who held hope that his mother would be alright to the adolescent who constantly blamed himself for her death.

His best friend, his _only_ friend had watched the old Stiles be tore apart by the new, leaving nothing but sarcasm and bitterness in his wake.

Whenever they both got to the place where Stiles’ mom became a suffocating presence and Scott’s dad was the topic that couldn’t be suppressed anymore they clung to each other and swore that they would never have to worry about being those people. That they would save each other from becoming what they feared most.

Unfortunately childhood promises decayed, much like childhood friendships.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles stared up at his mother, the bright red color of the juice splattered on his shirt and on the floor not doing much to hide the guilt and pain that was hanging off his face.

Gwen stared down at her son in horror, not sure what to do.

“Mommy,” Stiles whispered as he held his arm to his chest, the bright red scratches sluggishly bleeding against the stains of his tee-shirt “you hurt me.”

The young mother quickly gathered the young child against her, eyes wild with apology and desperation. “Mommy is so sorry baby, I’m so, so, sorry.”

“It’s ok mommy. It was an accident right?”

Gwen stilled at the words, eyes still vibrant with worry.

“Y-yeah baby… it was an accident.” The arms surrounding the small child tightened a bit more. “So we don’t have to tell daddy about it ok? It was… just an accident.”

“Yeah… ok.” Stiles murmured against his mother’s chest, eyes closing as the pain in his arm throbbed persistently. “Can I get a Batman Band-aid for my boo-boo mommy?”

“Of course sweetie,” Gwen smiled manically as she gently pushed the small child off of her lap. “If daddy asks, what do we tell him happened?”

“It was an accident!”

“And you…?”

“I… fell?”

“Good boy, baby.” Gwen smiled indulgently as Stiles hugged her once again, “good boy…”

 

* * *

 

 

He had become the liar he had tried not to be and Scott had become the abandoner that he had not wanted to be like.

Stiles supposed that it made sense that things came full circle.

He was his mother’s son after all.


	6. never means never (never means forever)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um... I... uh... I'm so sorry Stiles. Really. I swear. 
> 
> Oh JFC. o.o; 
> 
> I'm gonna point at the warnings again just to be safe. Cuz things only get crazier from here. 
> 
> On a lighter note next chapter should be a bit lighter.
> 
> Yay...?

The thing about psychiatric treatment was that it was always touch-and-go, especially if you were a part of outpatient therapy.

In patient was much more intense, sure, but not as intense as they would have you think depending on the situation and how “severe” the case was.

Basically, the system sucked over all but both sides had their uses in certain circumstances.

Now normally Stiles would try not to think about the logistics of all this.

He barely kept up with his own issues let alone how the system affected others.

But there was a reason he hated hospitals.

And it all came down to the system and how much it had failed both him and his mother.

 

* * *

 

_‘mommy, what’s wrong?’_

_‘baby… you have to go outside ok?’_

_‘… mommy?’_

_‘you go outside and you don’t. open. this. door. understand?’_

_‘yes, mommy.’_

_‘i love you baby.’_

_‘i love you too!’_

* * *

 

Derek watched as the Sheriff’s face crumpled at the news, blue eyes crinkled with disappointment and grief.

The luminescent brilliance of the flickering hospital lights above them gave the older man a translucent glow, making him appear much older than he ought to for a man his age.

Stiles had a way of making anyone feel way beyond their years, Derek was positive of this (and knew it from first hand experience).

“How long is he going to have to stay here?” John asked the doctor staring at rugged looking werewolf and exhausted Sheriff as if he had never seen an odder pair. After spending so much time with Derek at Stiles’ own expense (and his own, but Stiles didn’t have to know about that) he was quite used to the look by now.

“Well the bruises and cuts are easily treated but I would like to keep him under observation for a couple of days. Whatever substance was in his body was likely the cause of most of the damage to his internal organs-“

“Internal _what_? Damage, what _damage_?!”

“But as of right now he seems to be recovering fine.” The tall man gave both men a rather intense look, suspicion written all over his face, “I can’t quite identify what toxin was in his system at this point but when we figure it out I’ll be sure to give you a call.

“Thank you, doctor.” John sighed, pushing a hand up into his hair as the rigid physician gave them both a nod and continued on his way. “Now Derek…”

“I didn’t know he was going to face it by himself.” Derek immediately countered before John could get on him, green eyes narrowed with frustration both at the situation at hand and at _all_ of Stiles’ life choices. “I would never have approved. He is usually much less stupid than this.”

“But just as impulsive.” Clapping a hand on Derek’s shoulder, John smiled gravely. “Welcome to Stiles’ world Derek. We all just live in it.”

“ _Great._ Tell me this _after_ I get in a committed relationship with him.”

“Serves you right you know.”

“… … Touche.”

 

* * *

 

The breaking point had been the machines.

Beeping.

To their own-

Beat.

He remembered what that song sounded like.

It still haunted his dreams.

 

* * *

 

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Stiles stared at the hospital door from his position on the bed he was reclining on, soaking in everything he was just told.

“ _We’d like to keep you for a couple of days… any longer and you could have died. You may be fine now but we don’t know what kind of long term effects the poison may have had on your body Mr. Stilinski._ ”

Stiles felt his foot jiggle against the bed.

“ _You’ll be out of here before you know it._ ”

He seriously doubted that.

 

* * *

 

Before the hospital, his mother had not been so good.

It wasn’t something Stiles liked to dwell on.

He liked to pretend that it was the hospital that made her… ill.

But it wasn’t.

He remembered finding his mother’s files in his father’s drawer in his ( _their_ ) bedroom. Remembered reading it and realizing that his mother had never really been _right_ in the way a person should be.

For years Stiles had diluted himself into thinking his mother had loved him above all else when really she could barely feel love the way it was meant to be felt at all.

And that had been the hardest pill to swallow. 

 

* * *

 

Gwen felt sobs rack in her throat as she stared down at the small body huddled in on itself, brown eyes nearly identical to hers in every way glistening with falling tears.

“Baby… I’m so… I’m sorry!”

It had been an accident.

She hadn’t… she hadn’t…

Stiles coughed as the sobs screeching from his raw throat became too much. Gwen ached to hold him but was scared to even come near him without her son falling into another fit of panic.

She hadn’t meant to push him that hard.

She hadn’t meant to snap at him.

She hadn’t meant to…

_She hadn’t._

Gwen had been frustrated with John’s disappearing presence within their lives and her own… _situation_ becoming worse. Stiles had been the last person she had wanted to see her like this.

But he had been worried and Gwen had been frantic, and _no she didn’t want a hug, don’t touch me Stiles STOP!_

After that, the world became silent until it was reawakened with a deafening crack.

Stiles had looked up at her with such a heartbreaking expression, filled with both pain and betrayal.

That hadn’t been an accident.

He knew it as well as she did.

 

* * *

 

One day, Stiles would accept that his mother had been a woman in need of more help than what she had been given.

That she had thought too much of what she couldn’t do and too little of what could have been done to prevent all the little things that had led up to her hospitalization.

His mother had only been human.

With all the flaws that came with being so.

 

* * *

 

Stiles knew that the itching he felt wasn’t anything to do with the medicine they were giving him or the poison that had been in his system.

 _Beep_. _Beep. Beep._

He knew that it was impossible to describe that it was more than just a mental reaction, that it was deep within his bones, this itch he felt, that all he could do was scratch at it until the skin became red and red became white and make it go away, _make it go away, make it go AWAY_ -

“Stiles, do you need anything honey?” Melissa’s voice broke through the chant, brown eyes heavy with maternal worry. The nurse carried a chart with her, the stress of seeing Stiles on a hospital bed obvious in her stature.

_i need to get out, get me out now_

“I’m fine thanks.” Stiles smiled though he was sure it looked only like a caricature of one.

_why am i still here, i need to get out_

“Don’t hesitate to ask hon.” Melissa smiled as she walked out of the room, the look on Stiles’ face concerning her more than anything else.

_get me out, get me out, get me out…_

“I won’t.” Stiles whispered to the now empty room. “I won’t ask.”

 

* * *

 

 Being confined made Stiles itch.

And itch.

And itch.

He couldn’t stay still.

He couldn’t stay in one spot.

It just wasn’t in his DNA.

But more than anything…

It was the memories that did it.

Why.

_Mom why?_

 

* * *

 

 “I’LL BE GOOD, I SWEAR!”

Gwen held her head in her hands as she stared at the pantry door, now locked shut.

“Mommy, mommy let me out! Please, mommy, I don’t wanna be in here anymore…”

Her lips twitched as her fingers trembled against her scalp.

“Mommy… MOMMY!”

Gwen felt something in her snap as the little boy began pounding on the door anew, eyes wild with something akin to frustration.

“Mommy let me ouuuuut!”

Throwing her chair over, she stomped her way to the pantry and snapped the door open, face alight with anger.

“Mommy…?”

Stiles screamed as the pantry door shut closed behind her.

 

* * *

 

The more Stiles remembered…

The more he didn’t want to.

 

* * *

 

Derek kept giving him strange side-long glances every time Stiles shifted on the bed, as if knowing that Stiles would rather be _anywhere_ but where he was. Knowing his werewolf-y senses he probably _did_ know.

Damn him if he said anything about it though.

“Scott called me yesterday.” Derek randomly stated after Stiles’ fifteenth shift, obviously over Stiles’ bullshit. “I told him he could go to hell.”

“Uh… nice thing to say to my best friend?” Stiles blinked, somehow not surprised that his boyfriend would think that this would be a good conversation starter.

Derek didn’t even look the least bit sorry. Obviously. “Who left you for dead in the middle of a forest with a wild fairy on the loose looking to make you its next meal. What a great friend.”

“You wanted him in your pack once upon a time.”

“I was obviously under duress at the time.” The older werewolf fidgeted at the reminder, still smarting at the continual rejection handed to him time and again. It probably didn’t help that Stiles still shoved it in his face in times like these where criticizing Scott became a pastime. “I haven’t invited him into my pack in a long time now.”

“Snarky Derek is snarky. I likey. And didn’t you _just_ invite him into the pack like two months ago? Der, you’re inner twelve-year-old girl is showing again!”

“… Shut up Stiles.”

The bed-ridden teen laughed at the lack of response, the redden cheeks the Alpha was now sporting along with the embarrassment blazing behind those hazel-green eyes breaking the tense atmosphere that had been clouding the sterilized room.

After the bubble of tension burst things continued on an amiable manner, Stiles looking better than a few hours before and Derek looking reassured that his partner would not keel over dead in a moment’s notice (Stiles’ words not Derek’s). However there was something still hanging over Derek’s head. Something Scott had mentioned briefly on the phone with him, trying to haggle his way into the hospital.

Derek had not been above letting the Sheriff know _why_ his son was in the hospital or _who_ had left him by his lonesome and John had been just as angry as Derek had been when he was told that Scott had not given his best friend of nearly fifteen years a second glance whilst he laid out on the ground bleeding and poisoned.

Scott knew being banned was his own fault… but the phone call had seemed not so much about him being allowed to see Stiles (though that had been brought up… _extensively_ ) but about Stiles’ fear of hospitals.

 _“Just… don’t leave him alone in there for too long ok? When I say he gets scared, I mean he gets SCARED_. _Don’t give him a second to over think stuff or anything… you’ll end up getting just as freaked out as he does. Trust me.”_

_“And why should I trust you? You can’t even keep Stiles safe long enough to get him to help.” Derek bit out viciously._

_“I… you’re right. I messed up. I’m sorry.”_

_“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”_

_“Then let me see him and I’ll do it! Please!”_

_“I don’t think so.”_

_Derek ended the call, taking a sadistic pleasure in Scott’s suffering. The bulky werewolf wasn’t trying to make this about himself but damn if that didn’t feel_ great _._

“Why do hospitals scare you so much?” Derek asked quietly, the expression on Stiles’ face freezing into a strange mixture of furrowed eyebrows and a twist of a morbid grin.

“Why do you hate fire so much?”

Derek felt the air leave his lungs before he felt his legs get up on their accord and leave the room.

Stiles felt his leg begin to jiggle again under the pale white blankets. The heart wrenching look on Derek’s face before he left laid innocuously in his mind’s eye, reminding him that _yes, he was an awful person, thanks._

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

He didn’t see Derek again for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

Stiles had the ability of taking things that he loved and twisting them into things he could _obsess_ over until any type of love he felt became another _thing_ and not a feelingat all.

He had never really had a prime example of what love _should_ be after all.

Before his mother’s death he could hardly remember a time when his mother and father actually spent time together that wasn’t arguing. His father would be exasperated and not sure what wave-length his mother operated on. And his mother seemed to always believe that he was a step away from leaving her.

And it began to happen.

Less time was spent with both his mother and father until all he could remember was _mother_ and that-

He knew his father still blamed himself for the things his mother did when she hadn’t been in control.

For the things Stiles had to feel and see.

Stiles couldn’t tell you what love was because he never really had it exemplified in front of him to begin with.  

 

* * *

 

John stared at his living room, horrified.

Everything looked as if it had been ransacked, pictures smashed on the floor, lamps broken into pieces against the end tables. The sofas, which had been bought just a couple months prior, where slashed in various places, holes gaping with eviscerated fluff.

A trail of glass led from the living room and went up the stairs, as if beckoning the Sheriff to come up them.

Something told him not to go upstairs.

Screamed at him to stay where he was.

But his family…

John put his hand on his hip where he kept his gun strapped and slowly made his way upstairs.

As he made his way into the hallway leading to the rooms upstairs he heard the sound of someone crying, huffing noises that trembled into quiet shrieks. The crack of more glass pitched him into movement, the squishing sound of flesh slick against jagged edges spurring him into action.

The first door, the bathroom, lead to nothing.

The second door, the guest bedroom, was the same.

The third…

His and Gwen’s room.

It was _decimated_.

Parts of walls were scratched at, bits of red stained into the torn pieces. The drawers were flipped out and sprawled on the floor, all of their clothes scattered on the carpet. Pictures lay torn along with the fabric, memories ripped apart next to his feet. The art work that Gwen had picked out over the years was no more, thrown across the room as if they hardly mattered.

It looked like a disaster zone.

“Gwen?” John called out quietly, the sound from before intensifying as the name fell from his lips. The screeching became increasingly louder the closer to the master bedroom’s bathroom he got, the door ajar as light poured from the tiny crevice. “Gwen?”

One hand opened the door as the other stayed right over the gun against his hip, mentally preparing himself for whatever it was he was about to see.

Gwen met his sights head on.

John felt his jaw drop at the sight in front of him.

“John… Help me?”

 

* * *

 

Everything always came full circle.

It didn’t matter what you were running from.

It always came back to haunt you in the end.

 

* * *

 

“Gwen, where’s Stiles?!”

“John…  help me. Help me please!”

“Gwen… calm down. I’m going to call 911 but you need to tell me where Stiles is!”

“I can’t get it off… I can’t… Help… me…”

“Gwennie… Gwen. Don’t, don’t, you’re going into shock honey you need to stay calm. Stiles, where is Stiles?!”

“I don’t… know?”

“Shit.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles lived in an infinite loop.

You always hurt the ones you love right?

He was good at that.

 

* * *

 

Stiles stayed where he was, cradling his left arm against his chest as gently as he could without hurting himself even more than he was already hurt.

He wanted to let his pop-pop know that he was here.

But mommy said…

She said not to say anything.

It was an accident.

It was an accident.

It was an _accident._

Tears streamed down his face as the pain became unbearable.

It was hard to even keep his eyes open anymore.

It _all hurt._

 

* * *

 

Maybe one day he would be able to put everything behind him.

Everything he remembered would actually just _stay_ a memory.

But for right now, everything _still_ hurt.

And damn it all if the world wasn’t going to know it.

 

* * *

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Stiles stared at the heart monitor in disdain, biting his lips in an effort to keep himself grounded.

_Blip. Blip. Blip._

The I.V. still attached to his wrist jostled as Stiles yanked his arm up, fingers stretching and cracking.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

It felt like every nerve in his body was alight with panic, the red light in his brain demanding that he _go_ blaring manically in his head. His leg began to jiggle again, the need to _get up and go_ not alleviating in the least.

_Blip. Blip. Blip._

Everything was jumbled in his head and he couldn’t understand why he was still here, why he couldn’t go _home_. Seriously he couldn’t do this anymore. There was no doubt that enough was enough.

 _He wanted out NOW_.

Fifteen minutes later Stiles was out of the bed and in his clothes, ready to check himself out.

The amber-eyed teen refused to stay in this hell hole for a second longer.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, you think you’re doing the right thing.

Being a self-sacrificing idiot, Stiles always felt like he was doing the right thing.

Sometimes, what you’re really doing is repeating past mistakes.

Being the son of a mentally ill mother and a neglectful father, Stiles usually did this as well.

 

* * *

 

“The doctor said that they hadn’t even gotten a chance to run all of their tests before you tucked tail and ran out.” Derek muttered as he stared down at the young man settled in the computer chair. Stiles didn’t seem to be doing anything important, computer not even open. “Why did you leave?”

“I felt better.”

“Bullshit.” Derek took a step forward, hovering over the college student’s back. “Now tell me the real reason.”

“I…” Stiles shifted in the chair. His demeanor was closed off to Derek for once, not anywhere as inviting as it usually was when something needed to be resolved.

Derek made his way around the chair and leaned against the desk next to him.

“I’m not afraid nor do I hate fire.” Derek stated head on, eyes solely on Stiles. “I’m afraid of people because even though fire was used to kill my family, it was me falling for the wrong person that murdered them.”

Stiles stared up at Derek from his vantage point, eyes not as guarded but still defensive all the same.

“I get it if you don’t want to tell me. But when you do, I’ll be here waiting.”

At that, Stiles practically fell apart, arms curling around Derek’s middle whilst still sitting on the chair, head pillowed against Derek’s chest.

Large hands curled into Stiles’ light-brown hair, fingers stroking him into calm.

“I’m not scared of hospitals,” Stiles murmured quietly against Derek’s stomach, “I’m scared of the memories that come to me when I’m in them.”

Derek’s hand stilled at the quiet admission before continuing on with their pattern.

Stiles was thankful for the quiet that followed.

 

* * *

 

He was going to have to face the past at some point.

He always told Derek that facing the past made him stronger; that no matter what happened he would be by his side to face it with him.

Stiles knew that he couldn’t keep avoiding the very thing that made him who he was.

Derek had faced his demons.

It was time to face his as well.


	7. interlude ii: alpha(dog)/omega(lomaniac)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then there was another interlude. :| 
> 
> Ok, so despite the humor in this chapter there is a point for the set up. I swear! And not just for the obvious. Cookies to anyone who can figure it out mwahaha >:)
> 
> And no, my Stiles torture isn't done yet. Think of this as a small reprieve for the moment. Enjoy!
> 
> Side-note: Creeper!Sheriff is a Creeper. I wonder if I should make that a tag...? XD

It had taken a long time for Scott to accept Derek as Stiles’ new… ah, paramour for lack of a better word.

At the time Stiles would have went for the word fuck-buddy, but Derek was (surprisingly) much more romantic than Stiles when it came to talking about the beginning of their relationship.

But back to the Scott/Derek bro-thing. It had taken A LOT of time and effort to get Scott and Derek on the same damn page.

(More like chapter. Page was maybe stretching it a little. Or a lot. Ok, a hell of a lot.)

Like, seriously. They were ridiculous.  

A normal person wouldn’t believe how resistant those two could get when they got (stupid) ideas in their heads (which really, when were they going to figure out that ideas were made for Stiles and fighting was made for bulky werewolves with muscles the size of Stiles’ head?).

But that had all been expected. The pinnacle of normal. A difficult road that Stiles knew he had no choice but to walk down if he wanted to maintain _balance_ within their newfound trio.

Scott and Derek had always had a turbulent relationship (mostly on Scott’s end) and no matter how hard Derek tried to make amends and bridge the gap between himself and the Beta wolf Scott tended to shut Derek out without even trying.

Very similarly to what he was doing to Stiles now that he thought about it.

But Stiles was persistent. He knew that they had the ability to at least be able to sit in the same room together without wanting to get on the other’s last nerve.

It was the relationship that Derek managed to forge with Sheriff John Stilinski of all people that had thrown Stiles in a loop.

And Stiles was hardly thrown for any goddamn ‘loops’ these days.

They had managed to become the Bros to end all Bros.

They were the BrOTP to Stiles and Derek’s OTP.

They were BESTEST BEST FRIENDS 5EVA and damn it if that didn’t sound weird as hell when talking about his dad and former murder suspect and current lover of Stiles’ body Derek Hale.

And Stiles honestly to this day had no idea how the hell he hadn’t managed to see that bombshell coming.

 

* * *

 

 

Derek hadn’t had a conventional childhood, even before the fire.

He had resented it as a child becoming a teen, anxious to be the rebel that his inner nerd told him he should be. It hadn’t been that he had not loved his family or that the perks that came with being a supernatural being weren’t amazing but Derek had always felt ostrasized from everyone, normal or not. He felt alienated from his classmates for not being more like them and was constantly on the cusp of his family’s inner circle for wanting to be so tragically… mediocre.

At least that’s how Laura put it when asked about Derek’s tendency to not really involve himself in the politics that came with being a werewolf, let alone being a part of such a close knit pack.  

When the chance to be a regular person came barrelling at him full throttle in the form of blonde curls and a devilshly gorgeous smile he had leapt at the opportunity without even a second thought.

And then the fire happened.

And Derek couldn’t find it in him to blame anyone but himself.

So having a parental figure had become a far-fetched dream once his own parents had perished, his sister not nearly stable enough to hold the world on her shoulders (though it was not for lack of trying). Derek had not had it in him to fight off her attempts at counsel but barely acknowledged the effort, watching each sad word and caress bounce off of him and hit Laura twice as hard as before.

After awhile, it just didn’t seem worth the effort anymore.

And then Peter happened.

And Derek finally accepted that nice things, they just weren’t meant for him.

This helped explain why it had taken him so long to approach Stiles romantically. After so much time of looking at that very nice thing and hoping to God or whatever was out there that he wouldn’t manage to break it, Derek took the plunge head first and to this day didn’t regret a thing.

He had learned a lot once he became an Alpha, taking in the mistakes made and growing from  each experience. So much of that knowledge had come about because Stiles had been there to guide him, willing to lend him a hand when no one else, not even his own pack, would.

What Derek had not counted on was getting another nice thing packaged with Stiles.

Sheriff John Stilinski.

Seriously he still didn’t know how he had ended up with a shiny new ‘father’ to match the boyfriend he had acquired.

When Stiles figured it out, Derek wouldn’t mind if he shared the wealth.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time Derek found himself hanging out with John Stilinski had been a complete accident.

Derek had been given somewhat free reign within the Stilinski abode once both he and Stiles managed to bypass the ‘Awkward New Shiny Couple Is Awkward’ stage and slipped into a much more comfortable established routine within their courting.

John would later call it ‘going steady’.

Derek would eventually want to gouge his own eye out with a dirty spoon at ever agreeing to use the disgustingly sappy moniker.

But he digressed.

Derek had come to the Stilinski home expecting to see Stiles lounging on the sofa with his legs akimbo, arms flailing in that adorable way they did when faced with Derek’s ‘SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER’ appearances.

Damn Stiles and his pop culture references. They were now making their way into Derek’s own psyche.

_Crap._

Once the Alpha wolf had realized that not only was the teen not home but that _nobody_ was home he was hardpressed to leave. His pack had been driving him crazy at his apartment/new lair (damn it Stiles) and he really wasn’t in the mood to go for a run.

Sadly Derek didn’t have any other options immediately open to him. Such was the life of someone who chose to voluntarily hang around teenagers all day.

So the green-eyed werewolf jumped on the couch in a similar way Stiles would have had he been there and turned on the television, body slouching into a comfortable curve against the cushions that smelled the most like Stiles.

And no, that wasn’t creepy at all.

After an hour of vegetating in front of the baseball game he had put on, Derek flinched as a hand cupped his shoulder, claws out and ready to attack. John Stilinski arched an eyebrow at the near swipe, blue eyes crinkled with mild amusement.

“Hey there son,” John stated as he slipped his hand off of Derek’s shoulder “you alright there?”

“You startled me.” Derek stated uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

“You can just, uh, put those away huh?”

Derek felt his cheeks redden as he sheathed his claws. “Sorry. Again.”

John smiled as he waved off the apology, causing Derek to stiffen in his seat as the sheriff came around the couch and sat down next to the 24-year-old.

Soon after, it was if Derek was by himself again, immersed into the sport and yelling out in cheer and anger whenever a call was made that wasn’t to his satisfaction. If he heard a voice agreeing with his statements he put no mind to it, cataloguing it as John knowing what the hell he was talking about.

After about an hour of yelling at the television togethere, sometimes in syncronized voices, John felt the need to break the monotony and addresssed Derek directly.

“You know a lot about the game son. Been a fan for a long time I gather?” Derek huffed out a snort of amusement.

“Since I was five. I even played in highschool. Thought about going pro but… my parents always looked down on us using our powers for our own desires. After they passed away, I… I wanted to respect their wishes. Baseball just became sometihng I watched and occassionally dreamed about.”

“Bull shit.” John spat out. “Even if they didn’t like it they would have wanted you to follow your dreams. If you love it you don’t give up on it. Simple as that.”

Derek shrugged. “Never stopped loving the game. The dream though… I’m good with what I’ve got now.”

“If you say so.” The sheriff nodded. An idea seemed to come flourishing at the end of the ninth inning, the rest of the conversation having tempered out as the game became tense and both men allowed the sport to overtake all else. Standing up once the game was over, John smirked at the younger man as he stared up at the looming man in confusion. “You need to show me how good you are.”

“What?”

“C’mon, Stiles doesn’t indulge me anymore and you seem to appreciate the finery that is baseball in ways Stiles never will. Grab the mitt and ball I got perched on the second shelf in the pantry and show me what ya got.”

“Um… o…k…”

And that’s how Stiles found them an hour later, outside playing catch.

Or more like Derek playing catch and John egging him to ‘Show him what he was really made of’.

Stiles didn’t know who to make fun of more at the end of day; Derek and the endless dog jokes at his disposal or his father for the burnt hand he ended up having to soak in warm water and epsom salt after one too many fast balls via Derek’s super strength.

The green-eyed Alpha kept close to the sheriff for the rest of the day, ignoring the infuriartingly smug look hanging off of Stiles’ face as a result.

 

* * *

 

 

After that, the meetings became regular and, thankfully, a lot less awkward.

For Derek anyway.

Stiles, on the other hand…

He had a bit of trouble adjusting to the strangeness of the situation at hand.

And by a bit, Derek meant a hell of a lot.

 

* * *

 

 

“Dad?”

“Yes son?”

“Uh… you know this is Derek and my’s date night?”

John gave the boy a mild glare, sitting in between the werewolf and teen without a shit given about what he was interrupting or who. “And?”

“… Uh…”

“Problem?”

Stiles got up, the movie still playing behind him. “I’m just gonna… stick my head in the freezer thanks. Have fun you guys!”

“Will do.”

“… Stiles. Get me a beer.”

“Me too while you’re at it!”

“Oh what, how do you guys even-Ugh! You’re both lucky you’re my favorites!”

“Don’t forget the chips!”

“DAD! YOUR ARTERIES, OH MY GOD!”

“That wasn’t me that asked for chips that was Derek!”

“With your intent tacked on, don’t even try to say otherwise!”

“… nice try son.”

“Maybe next time I guess.”

 

* * *

 

And it only got worse the longer both Stiles and Derek had managed to stay together.

 

* * *

 

 

“Dad,” Stiles murmured as he tried to ignore the heavy shadow settling over his left side, eyes firmly on the pool of water in front of him “you’re making Derek uncomfortable. And me for that matter. You are making me very, very uncomfortable. So please… stop.”

Derek practically shifted into Stiles’ lap as John kept his gaze on Derek’s hands which were holding onto the long thick rod with a firm grip.

Fishing rod that is.

“It’s just… six fish. How the hell does he catch six fish on his first try fishing? On what planet is that even possible?”

“Maybe the fish just flock to his Alpha-ness like birds to a feather. They all flock together. Ha. Get it? Cuz… they are all animal related yet completely not any other way. I am so funny. And dad, you’re still creeping Derek out which by the way I did not even think that was possible but thanks for enacting revenge for all the times he managed to scare me shitless and creep me the hell out.”

John ignored his son’s ramble and kept his eyes directly on Derek’s hands, his wonderment both strange and just a bit disturbing. “It’s just… I can’t… how?”

“Can we go home now?” Derek quietly asked as his line began to wiggle again, another fish nibbling at the end of his wire.

“Son, we’re not going anywhere till you tell me how the hell you’re doing this and show me how to fish the same way.”

“But… I don’t know… how?”

Stiles nearly smacked himself in the face as his father glared at the hands still holding the line, the fearful look on Derek’s face now bordering the ‘Hysterical’ line of funny and entering ‘Weird and Unsightly’.  

The honey-eyed college student dropped his line and glared out at the shore, wondering if the swim to the dock was even worth the wet, stinky smell he would have to endure afterwards.

It was not.

“Oh God, how is this my life?!”

 

* * *

 

In fact, Stiles and Derek would even say that John’s fascination with Derek bordered on the ‘too’ friendly spectrum.

Stiles would say it was because John felt he finally got the son he had always wanted with Derek.

Derek just wished that he would stop creeping him the hell out.

 

* * *

 

“Stiles, why is this not weird.”

The amber-eyed teen smirked from his spot in front of his computer, still dressed in his pajamas whilst his anxiety-ridden werewolf boyfriend stood in a pair of jeans and nothing else.

“What, you want to have a weird relationship with my dad? I mean it is weird, I’ll give you that, but _with_ him? I’ll be honest Derek I don’t think I can handle all the weird. Some of the weird yeah but not all of it. Reserve some of the weird for our relationship at least, we need to keep the spice going somehow.”

“Stiles.” Derek growled mencaingly to cover up his panic. “We are going camping.”

“That’s not bad!”

“You’re not coming with us!”

Ok,” Stiles hid his grin behind a well placed hand “that is a bit… strange. But nothing too out there.”

“Stiles I am spending the weekend camping with your father and away from you, my _actual_ boyfriend. What is _not_ out there about this?!”

“Well he’s not going to turn into a sparkling vampire and try to spontaneously court you. There’s always that.”

“Can’t you be serious for once?” Derek began to pace, hands settled over his hips like a girl ready to go on a rant. “Why aren’t you coming with us again?”

“Yeeeaaah, I don’t do camping and pop-pop knows this already. So now that he has you around he probably sees this as an opportunity to, I don’t know, bond like men or whatever? All I do know is he loves camping, he has somebody to go with him now who isn’t going to whine about it the whole time like I would and he is ecstatic to be going. Are you really going to rain on his damn parade Derek?”

Derek let the nickname slide just this once, concentrating on the important information.

John was, in essence, putting Derek in the son role that Stiles still tended to shy away from, from time to time and Stiles was essentially guilting him into diving into said role head first and damning the consequences.

Usually such manipulation tactics on his lover’s part were a lot less in your face and more ‘shit, how the hell did he _do_ that?!’, so that meant that Stiles expected him to catch onto the tactic but still go through with it anyway.

Which…

Which if the 24-year-old werewolf was honest, he was going to go through with it anyway.

What the hell.

“You’re not even being subtle about this.” The Alpha spat out, frustrated and still jittery with nerves.

The pale-skinned teen smirked as he pulled on the hem of his baggy tee-shirt, eyes glowing with satisfaction. “I know.”

And there was that shit eating grin Derek loved to hate and hated to love.

Fuck the boy for being so delectable.

Literally _and_ figuratively.

“You owe me _so badly_ for this.”

“One, you know he only invited you because _you_ were the one that mentioned that you missed going with your family. Two, you know you’re going to enjoy it because for some weird reason you like sleeping outdoors and you and my dad have some weird platonic bromance going on that puts mine and Scott’s to near shame and three, I would do _whatever_ _you wanted me to do_ even without the obscure threat you have going on in the middle of your sentence there, buddy.” Stiles smirked through his whole list, eyes glowing with satisfaction and humor. “So… yeah. I don’t owe you anything bub. If anything, _you_ owe _me_.”

Derek opened his mouth to retort but shut it immediately after as he heard the sounds of bounding feet coming up the stairs and excited breathing.

Derek was going to enjoy the weekend but that was beside the point.

_Damn it Stiles how do you even find this normal?!_

* * *

 

Dinner nights became normal.

And family nights.

_Including Derek in them._

It was…

It was _so weird._

And domestic.

Sometimes Derek wondered if John knew that both Stiles and Derek had only been in a relationship for barely less than year, right?

And that said son was still in college.

And barely legal.

And not yet of drinking age.

Ok, and now Derek felt like a creeper.

_Oh my God him and John Stilinski were Creeper Bros._

 

* * *

 

“Derek, please pass the mashed potatoes before your werewolf stomach manages to devour those too.”

Derek (predictably) glowered but did as Stiles asked, ignoring the kiss blown his way in return.

The magenta-stained cheeks Stiles got for his efforts were dubiously ignored for the time being.

John stifled a manic giggle behind his fork-full of peas (which Stiles had been adamnat he eat, as if he weren’t a full grown man).

Thanks Der-Bear! I’ll make sure to recomp you later lovey!”

“Stiles!”

“Really Stiles? At the table? Where I can _hear_ you? What the hell is the matter with you, son?”

Both men gave the spazzy teen a wild eyed stare before giving the other a side glance, commeserating _all_ of their Stiles-related life choices.

Stiles just laughed as he blew both men a kiss and got back to his food, ignoring the dual glares now aimed in his direction.

God he loved his men.

“Only my boys.” John muttered at near the same time, making both Derek and Stiles blush, if for different reasons.

Derek said nothing else for the rest of the night but smiled quietly to himself in acceptance of what was just given to him.

 

* * *

 

So maybe what they had wasn’t conventional.

Derek couldn’t say that he was entirely comfortable with the relationship he had with the sheriff but it did have its uses.

Like now for instance.

Staring at the young man whilst he slept on the uncomfortable bed did not spark the greatest of memories for the bulky werewolf but the constant beeping of the machines and the steady sound of the beating of Stiles’ heart assured him that he was indeed alright and just _fine_.

It was alright that his and Scott’s relationship hadn’t panned out, though he was sure Stiles lamented the loss of bringing all the people he held in such close regard together. Because Derek still had the sheriff on his side and that was worth more than some self-absorbed teenager turned-werewolf.

John trusted and loved Derek now.

He was _pack_.

It was safe to say that Derek trusted and loved John too.


	8. gonna change you (like a remix)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me finally updating, so what do ya know? 
> 
> Some things before we start the chapter- 
> 
> 1\. Shit's 'bout to get cray. Like seriously, get ready to be partially confused and really, let's just go with confused lol.
> 
> 2\. You'll notice I have added Derek/Sheriff Stilinski Creeper tags. If you haven't gotten Creeper vibes from the both of them while reading this story then I honestly don't know if we are talking about the same story. For reals. 
> 
> 3\. And lastly, trigger warnings are here for a reason. I will be adding additional ones after this chapter so please note that Suicide and Suicidal Thoughts are here and they are going to be abundant in this and the next coming chapter. I'm not trying to ruin anything for anyone but I would rather warn and not have people say I didn't give them a heads up than not say anything at all. 
> 
> Many thanks to lifelesslyndsey for all the suggestions she gave me! A lot of them were incorporated in the chapter so I have to give a little shout out and much more appreciation for the help she gave me! :D 
> 
> Enjoy you guys! Hopefully the next chapter doesn't take forever and a day to complete like this one did!

 

Gwen knew in the far reaches of her mind that this was probably the dumbest thing she had ever done _ever_.

The moment that Stiles unlocked the first latch of her restraints she had realized what it was she needed to do and _hated it_. For a golden second she imagined telling him to stop and to go find his father, to get away from her, as far away from her ( _this room, this place, this town_ ) as the innocent boy could.

For one complete second she had thought about her son and what this would do to him, and after that simple moment passed her by, Gwen stopped caring all over again.

 

* * *

 

_It was a giant blur._

_He couldn’t tell the psychiatrists or therapists how the older woman had managed to escape the room and slip out of the hospital so quickly, only that she had held his hand the entire time and not once had she let him go._

_Not once did she leave him behind._

_Her cold, clammy fingers had trembled as they snuck past all the guards and made their way towards one of the storage rooms_

_‘-just need to grab something stiles, don’t worry-‘_

_Once they reached out back through the kitchen doors, Stiles could hear his father’s panicking voice grow all the shriller until it was a grating screech ringing throughout the hallways. The patients became increasingly unstable the louder John became, (stiles remembered) flitting bodies flinging from wall to wall through the barred windows screaming alongside the unknown (to them) voice until one of the heavy-looking men in white began to restrain and muffle the police man_

_‘-it’s going to be ok now, i swear-‘_

_The woods had seemed so large and ominous to him but when he opened his mouth to tell his mother he was becoming afraid she continued to lead him forward, pushing him past the fear and into another realm of anxiety entirely_

_‘-we’re both going to be_ ok.’

_Stiles stared up at his mother as she stopped in front of a tree and stifled a sob._

_‘I can’t…’_

_“_ Mommy?”

 

* * *

 

Stiles cried that night, his hands encased with blood and his arms wrapped around a cold woman who used to be his mother.

 

* * *

 

Scott knew that he had messed up.

 _Atrociously_.

It hadn’t been the first time nor would it be the last, especially when it came to his special bro-ship with Stiles. He couldn’t even keep it together with Allison, who Stiles liked to call the love of his wolfy-life, so trying to keep his relationship with Stiles semi-functional was difficult on the best days and near impossible on the worst.

It wasn’t Stiles’ fault though, that Scott knew.

So when Stiles was mad at him, the brown-eyed werewolf didn’t hold it against him. Even when he didn’t know why he was mad, he still didn’t hold it against him.

Stiles always had a good reason.

Or at least a reason.

Stiles generally had a motivation for the things he did. Kind of. Scott hoped.

But today…

Today was just _weird_.

And not _Stiles_ weird. That was normal.

Scott stared at Stiles as he kept his head down, burnt whiskey-colored eyes glaring down at his notes as if they had personally offended him. There were no flails or wayward murmurs that accompanied the unusual staring contest, which worried Scott even further. There was literally no movement whatsoever except for the smallest tremor of Stiles’ hands which lay neatly on his desk, otherwise unmoving.

Scott kicked the other man’s leg but still nothing.

Stiles didn’t even blink. d

The teenage wolf held back the question on the tip of his lips as the professor cleared his throat in their direction, clearly not ready to put up with their shenanigans today.

 

* * *

 

Stiles hated mornings like these.

He could feel it under his skin, the irritation, the anger, the agitation, however you wanted to describe it, he could _feel_ it itching until he wanted to scratch and pick at his arm and wrist and hands-

As he stared at the medication sitting innocently in his medicine cabinet he wondered what the use was.

Stiles hated mornings like these.

Cranky.

Tired.

No sleep.

Couldn’t sleep. Too much thinking. Stiles. What are you doing? I’m working. I can’t do this right now. I’m so tired.

Stiles.

Stiles.

“ _Stiles._ ”

The 19-year-old college student paused, his hand halfway to his Adderall.

He could have sworn-?

No.

Just in his head.

Again.

_Always in his head._

The large print of the presricption looked dull under the bright sheen of his bathroom light.

What was the point?

She didn’t…

‘I don’t need it. Today. Just today. Tomorrow’s another day. Yaaay.’

Stiles closed his medicine cabinet and continued on with his day.

It was just another crappy morning.

And Stiles hated how they made him feel sometimes.

* * *

 

_It was going to be a really bad day._

_God, Gwen hated mornings like these._

_Stiles giggled as he splashed around in the bathtub, watching his mother out of the corner of his eye._

_The older woman stared at the meds waiting to be swallowed, already hating the eventual cloudy haze that would overcome her once she took them._

_Gwen gave Stiles a little smile._

_“You promise you won’t tell on mommy if she doesn’t take her yucky medicine today?”_

_“But daddy says you have to take them everyday to feel all better.” Stiles stated matter of fact. “Says I gots to tell ‘im when you don’t drink ‘em all everyday.”_

_“Yeah, but it’s just for today ok? They make mommy’s head hurt sometimes,” Gwen tossed Stiles his favorite boat into the tub, eyes gleaming under the bathroom lights “you don’t want mommy’s head to hurt do you? You don’t want mommy feeling all sicky cuz of some stupid pills right?”_

_Stiles didn’t even have to think about it._

_And Gwen didn’t have to worry about her medication._

_She would be fine._

_She was always fine._

_John needed to trust her…_

_Gwen winced as her temples began to throb, eyes clouding over with pain._

_God, she hated mornings like these._

_Hated how they made her_ feel _._

* * *

 

Scott definitely knew something was wrong now.

Stiles didn’t even acknowledge him as he stared out at the woods, eyes vacant and body still.

His hands continued to tremor though. Scott could practically hear the bones rattling, wrist bones gritting aginast each other as they began to rotate alongside the tremors.

It was as if the amber-eyed teen wasn’t there at all.

_And maybe he wasn’t._

‘Shit.’ Scott didn’t have a lot of epiphanies but when he did, they were usually doozies. Without another thought, he trailed after his best friend and hoped to whatever diety was out there that everything was ok.

Because Scott wasn’t strong in the same way that Stiles was.

He wouldn’t be able to live knowing that Stiles wasn’t _Stiles_ anymore, not like Stiles did when-

When everything turned upside down and his best friend fell apart.

* * *

 

_remember when we were young and I said that i wanted to be batman and you said that i could do that?_

_that i could do anything?_

_i could_ be _anything?_

_do you?_

_Remember, that is?_

_i do._

_everyday._

_i remember sunshine and flowers and broken hearts._

_because that was what was normal for us._

_then i found scott and he became a place that i could go in my head when you lost yours._

_remember?_

_don’t you?_

* * *

 

 _“_ -TILES?! ARE YOU IN THERE?! IT’S ME, SCOTT!”

Stiles felt his world shift back once Scott’s hands reached his shoulders and chestnut brown eyes kept a hold of his vision. The younger man blinked as he stared at the werewolf practically crying in his arms, not sure how they got outside or what time it was or…

What.

The.

Hell.

“Um… who else would you be, dumbass? Little Red Riding Hood?” Stiles snarked instead, his heaed whirling around in confusion and fear at the situation at hand. “And how the hell did I get outside? I was just in bed… with Derek…”

Stiles stalled, the confusion now leaking from his voice onto his expression. “Scott, how did I get outside?”

“Stiles,” Scott began gently, hands not moving once from his shoulders “you don’t remember going to class this morning? And acting all zombie weird?”

The lanky-limbed 19-year-old shook his head, panic filtering his gut like it was second nature. “I… I just remember watching TV with Derek and then going to bed. That’s it. I can’t… remember…”

“Deaton.” Scott stated.

“No.” Stiles murmured. “This isn’t…”

_Magical._

_Supernatural._

_Out of the ordinary._

_For me._

Stiles could have said so much but the look on his face seemed to finish his sentence just fine.

Scott held on even tighter until even that wasn’t enough, pulling the boy he could practically call his brother to his chest and closing his eyes.

He couldn’t lose Stiles to this.

He wasn’t strong, not in the same ways that his best friend was.

Not when it came to things like this.

* * *

 

_Everything was changing._

_The colors were draining away until everything was grey and Stiles couldn’t tell anyone why._

_Gwen looked at her son, not an ounce of care encapsuled in the look._

_Stiles knew this was somehow his fault._

_It had to be._

_Because a mother didn’t just stop loving her son._

_He was obviously the problem._

_Stiles needed to fix it._

_Needed to fix himself._

 

* * *

 

Stiles felt his world shift as the cupboard door opened.

His large brown eyes squinted as they peered up at the giant figure looming over them, arms shivering as they were held as tightly against his chest as possible.

“ _Stiles?!_ ”

Everything was going to change.

He could feel it the moment his father’s face became less suspicious and more mortified then panicked and finally outraged.

Stiles licked his cracked lips as the blood trickling down his forehead tickled his mouth.

“ _Gwen what the hell did you do?!_ ”

Everything was going to change.

Why did that feel so wrong to think?

“ _HE’S MY SON! MINE! DON’T TOUCH HIM! DON’T TOUCH HIM!”_

_“Gwen get a hold of yourself, NOW!”_

Everything hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain he felt in his heart.

It pounded so much he just knew it was going to come out of his chest.

Stiles wanted his mommy.

She would make it better. Once he was good again she would make all the boo-boos go away. She would.

“ _No, no, no, get off of me, GET AWAY FROM ME NOW! STILES! BABY! STILES, YOU DON’T GO WITH THOSE PEOPLE! GET AWAY FROM ME!_ ”

But now she was going to go away and Stiles knew that no amount of pleading would bring her back.

“ _Stiles…?_ ”

Large brown eyes blinked back tears as his father’s tall figure came forward, arms stretched out like some sort of savior.

Stiles ran to his father and held on tight. If this was all he could have for now, then he would cherish it.

“ _Give me my son! Stiles! STILES!_ ”

Closing his eyes, Stiles began to hum.

‘ _i love you mommy._ ’

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure you’re going to be ok?” Derek quietly cajoled against Stiles’ side. Both men were practically on top of the other with how close they were sitting together but neither called the other out on it.

“Well I haven’t had a weird blank out since Scott did his bro-hug so I’m good for now apparently.” Stiles smirked as Derek frowned at the mention of contact, leg hitching higer on Stiles’ hip. The bed was clearly not made for a massive werewolf and a gangly teenager but both men made it work as best they could. Stiles would not let something as measly as space deny him his snuggles.

 _Blasphemy_.

“You really can’t remember anything?” The green-eyed sculpture that Stiles liked to call his boyfriend quietly questioned against the pale skin of his neck, licking one of the moles that lay there in an innocous display of affection.

Pfft, innocent for somebody else maybe. Not for Stiles.

“I told you, it was probably just from sleep deprevation. And plus it doesn’t help that these things,” Stiles pointed to the place just above the bandage on his torso where the claw and bite marks lay, “haven’t really healed yet. God, it feels like they’re just getting worse to tell the truth…”

“That would be the wonder of the human healing process.” Derek smirked.

“Oh shut up. Nobody likes a smarty-wolf.” Stiles replied back. The smile on his face ruined the effect though, all syrupy sweet and content.

Derek loved it when Stiles got like this. Like he could have this all the time and Stiles was just fine with that.

“I’m going to go get some snacks,” Stiles rolled his eyes but nodded, accepting the kiss he received in response. “Stay here and relax.”

“Sir, yes Sir!”

“Stiles, what have I told you about roleplay talk!”

Stiles banged his head against the wall as Derek laughed, the sheriff’s voice ringing in the room loud and clear.

“DAD, WE WEREN’T ROLEPLAYING BUT IF YOU WANT US TO WE HAVE NO PROBLEMS DOING SO!”

“OH GOD WHY!”

Derek’s laughter rang throughout the house.

 

* * *

 

Stiles didn’t want to say anything but things were not fine.

Derek’s heavy breathing was tickling his ear and his arm was wrapped around his waist and he wasn’t fine.

Brown eyes stared at him through the window’s reflection and Stiles knew, he just _knew_ , those eyes weren’t _his_.

“Derek…” Stiles whispered, the arms around him caging him even as he tried to pull himself. “Derek, let me up.”

A pale hand grazed the glass of the window pane, lifeless and white. The eyes narrowed even as Stiles began to really struggle but Derek’s hold wouldn’t _yield._

“Derek, let me up!”

Stiles tried scratching, kicking, hitting, _anything,_ but the Alpha would neither let go or wake up and the breathing only got heavier.

Streaks of blood followed the hand’s path as it quietly opened the window and invited whatever ( _not whatever, stiles knew who that was, oh god no_ ) was outside, _in_.

“Derek, let me go!”

Teeth clamped at his neck for his trouble, blood red eyes glaring down at him with an animosity Stiles hadn’t seen in _years_.

“Derek…”

“ _Stiles?_ ”

Amber-brown eyes widened as they looked up and saw Stiles’ own face reflected back to him, this one ravaged with age and belonging to a woman who was long passed.

Stiles couldn’t speak for a moment, the blood pouring down his neck making him woozy.

Gwen ran her cold, dead hand down her son’s face and smiled.

“ _Goodnight._ ”

 

* * *

 

Stiles woke up with the word Mother hanging from his lips and hot blooded arms entangled around his waist.

Without a single word he made his way out of bed and ran to the shower, only stopping long enough to check to make sure the window was locked.

Four times.

He wasn’t paranoid.

Not at all.

 

* * *

 

Stiles didn’t think anything of the resulting headache or the nightmare.

Those types of things happened, especially to him.

He chalked it up to just another night.

And when it happened the next night he thought nothing about it again.

Those were things he dealt with on a regular basis.

Right?

_Nothing to worry about at all._

Except Derek was starting to catch on to the not-fine-ness of the situation at hand once Stiles began pull away from Derek touching him and not touching the older werewolf in return.

Stiles tried to will away the fear but the nightmares were getting worse and the voices…

He heard her everywhere.

She was everywhere.

And now she was taking Derek away from him and that was _not fine_.

Everything came to a head however once the panic attacks became too much to hide.

He couldn’t pretend everything was fine anymore because he knew, he _knew_ , nothing was _fine_.

 

* * *

 

“Stiles, are you ok?”

The lanky college student almost jumped out of his skin. A pair of incredibly sorry puppy dog eyes bombarded him not a second later, a large portion of Scott’s being pushed against Stiles’ peripherals as a result.

“It’s been almost a week…” Scott began wearily, obviously much more worried than Stiles gave him credit for. “Look, I think it’s time to talk to Deaton. This may be a lot more supernatural than we might’ve originally thought. You haven’t been getting any better, Stiles, and that wound on your torso is fest-”

“No, Scott. Stop.” Stiles snapped, throwing his books on the ground. “Stop making excuses for me ok? It’s not going to help the situation or fix anything. Maybe I’m just broken. Ok?! MAYBE I’M JUST DONE WITH TRYING TO BE NORMAL!”

“Stiles…” Scott had his mouth hanging open, not having expected this kind of response from his best friend. “Stiles, ok, I get it. But I’m just gonna say it. I don’t think this has anything to do with your mom.”

“What.” Stiles scoffed, his hands trembling as he rubbed his hair in a circular motion “What do you even know about anything? You haven’t been talking to me. You don’t even know what the hell has been going on my _life_. You’re just an overly romantic idiot who only sees his crazy girlfriend and his werewolf buddies who _weren’t there when no one else was!_ ”

Scott didn’t get a chance to say anything in return before Stiles whirled around and stomped towards his jeep, his heart in his throat and his claws now digging into his palms.

‘ _That wasn’t Stiles_.’ The Beta werewolf practically cried out in his mind, brown eyes shining golden for a split second. ‘ _His scent is… blurry. And distorted. Deaton will know what to do because that. Is not. Stiles._ ’

Scott refused to take any other answer into consideration.   

 

* * *

 

Deaton wasn’t surprised when Scott burst into the clinic not even 20 minutes later with a shout, eyes wild with panic.

He did become concerned once he began describing Stiles condition.

Beginning with his early leave from the hospital in which Stiles was apparently still recovering from wounds that _weren’t healing_. The hospital, the place which Deaton had _told_ Stilinskito stay at until they were _absolutely sure_ that the poison was out of his system and he was no longer in any immediate danger.

And he had left. Early.

What was his life. 

“Sit down Scott,” Deaton drawled out as he wiped his hands on the towel hanging half-hazardly off the table “I think I’m going to have to whip something up for this. Stiles isn’t going to be _himself_ for quite some time now.”

“ _I knew it!_ ”

Deaton rolled his eyes at Scott’s sudden exclamation, not the least bit impressed.

He was so done with these idiots.

 

* * *

 

John watched his son as he sat at the table, quiet as a mouse.

The look in his eyes…

They were so familiar.

_Too familiar._

“Stiles,” John licked his lips, worrying at his bottom lip in particular when he got no response. “Stiles are you ok.”

Still no response.

John slowly got up and made his way to his cellphone, not willing to go through this alone ( _not again, he wouldn’t go through this alone again_ ).

Luckily enough, Derek answered after the first ring.

“ _What’s wrong with Stiles?_ ”

And it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t the only one who knew that something wasn’t quite right with his kid.

“Just get over here, alright? Stiles is… he doesn’t look good and I think he’s finally hitting his breaking point. He’s not… I’ve tried to bring him back and he’s just _not here_.”

It barely took Derek 30 minutes to get there, but by then, Stiles was nowhere to be found. John turned to answer the phone and like smoke, Stiles faded away into the night.

John knew that he couldn’t make the same mistake that he made with Gwen with Stiles.

He couldn’t ignore the problem.

Not when Stiles was all he had left.

* * *

_  
_

Stiles stared at the paper in front of him, wondering what he had been thinking about.

In fact, he hadn’t been sitting down.

When had he sat down?

“ _Stiles_?”

Warm amber brown eyes widened as the familiar voice flitted in his ears, turning around in shock.

Nothing but the stale air of his bedroom greeted his sight.

Stiles felt his fingers begin to tremble, then his palms until the feeling extended to his wrists, eyes taking in everything in the room yet still disbelieving of what he was _positive_ he had just heard.

“Mo-mom?”

Nothing but silence answered Stiles in return.

‘It’s not… it’s not… I’m not going crazy. I know what I heard. _I know what I heard._ ’

“ _Mommy_?”

 The room felt odd, however, and began to melt in the corners, the rising smell of burning materials waffing in the air until it began to clog his lungs and throat.

‘Oh god why am I burning? _Why am I burning?_ What the hell is going on?!’

Stiles opened his eyes with a gasp, a tiny fire in front of him crackling quietly under the moonlight. He was outside.

He was _outside._

_How the hell did he get outside?_

‘Nothing is fine. Everything is not fine. It is the furthest away from fine you can ever imagine, why am I out here by myself, where’s dad? Where’s Derek? Where’s Scott? I want to go home and watch movies and maybe some porn, but I’m too scared to jerk off so probably just some movies. Knowing Derek it’ll be a stupid rom-com ‘cause that’s how Derek secretly rolls, with unicorns and sparkles and shit and I’ll sit next to him and smile and laugh and not touch him _because everything is NOT FINE._ ’

He couldn’t even _remember_ starting a fire.

Stiles looked down at his hands, wincing at the scorched marks singeing the insides of his palms and the lines of fingers. He may not remember making the fire but it was pretty obvious he did. The nineteen-year-old college student slowly stood up and looked for something to douse the flame, confused once he saw the bucket of water sitting next to the controlled flame. The teen threw the water over the fire and backed away from the scene, not sure why the wooded area was bothering him so much but knowing that he needed to get away and soon.

Stiles held onto his side as he ran towards what he hoped was the nearest road, his hip and waist throbbing in indescribable pain.

Something wasn’t right.

Something wasn’t _right_.

Stiles just wasn’t sure if it was all in his _head_ anymore.

He kept running forward until his feet began to hurt and his mind began to wander…

 

* * *

 

_i want to forget about the past._

_the dirty one._

_the one that makes me want to cry._

_i want to remember the times you loved me_

_and hugged me_

_and told me that i was wonderful_

_and worth the whole world._

_i want to think about your face_

_and never remember a single glare_

_or snarl_

_or fist_

_or hit._

_i want to remember my mommy._

_the one i thought would love me forever until she couldn’t love me anymore._

 

* * *

  

Stiles couldn’t say how he got outside.

‘what the hell is going on where am I what’s happening?’

But he was sure it wasn’t going to be an answer he liked.

‘where is everyone?’

A white visage stared at him, eyes radiating disappointment.

‘why… why do you keep following me everywhere?’

He was drowning and no one seemed to care.

He was-

He was drowning.

_Stiles was ACTUALLY DROWNING._

“STILES!”

Stiles tried to flail but his arms felt like lead, eyes burning as they stared up ahead at the clear night sky.

The muffled scream from before was forgotten before it could actually settle in his mind, his throat closing up as the water burned his lungs.

_He was going to die._

_He was going to die and he didn’t even know how he got here or where here even was._

_His friends didn’t know._

_His family._

_Stiles was going to die and it was going to be alone, just as he secretly feared._

Stiles blinked once more, a catch of white floating above him until everything ( _blessedly_ ) became black.

 

* * *

 

“Where am I?”

John bit his thumb as he stared at his son, the young boy barely coherent as he lay on the bed.

The doctors had immediately set to work on Stiles once he had been tranquilized by the accompanying nurses trailing after the network of security guards that had had to take down the slim boy screaming at the top of his lungs once he had been led to the hospital by his father and boyfriend.

Derek had initially attempted to help with the situation but John had held him back.

“ _Do you trust me son?_ ”

“… _Yeah. You know I do._ ”

“ _Leave Stiles with the professionals. They’ll know what to do._ ”

“ _But… this might not be all…_ normal _._ ”

“ _This is normal, son. As normal as the son of Gwendolyn Stilinski could be expected to be. Let them do what they have to do now… Stiles isn’t with us anymore, son._ ”

“ _… … Ok._ ”

It had killed the Alpha werewolf to leave his partner’s side and ignore the shrieks reverberating off the walls of the room but the uncomfortable silence that followed the attacks were perhaps worse, making John feel as if he were constantly on edge. Derek looked as if he were moments away from ripping anyone who kept him from Stiles to shreds and taking him and not looking back; John knew the feeling of wanting to protect and coddle and defend. But he wouldn’t let either of the boys be hurt by this.

Derek needed to trust him. The sheriff knew what he was doing this time.

He wouldn’t make the same mistakes.

“Are they going to send him away?” Derek quietly murmured against his hands, shielding his face from view.

John kept quiet, not sure if he wanted to comfort the younger man or break him with the harsh reality; the reality that it had taken John _years_ to rebuild himself even after Gwen had passed and was quite literally nothing more than a memory.

 

* * *

 

“There was fire.”

Derek bit his lip as he stayed in the shadows of the hospital room.

John had sent him home a good hour ago.

But what John didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“Then water.”

He was almost sure that Stiles didn’t know he was in the room, let alone that he was talking When they had found the shivering man laid out in front of the old Hale house, Derek had not known what to think. Hours spent looking for him and Stiles had been in his old family home, spread out like some sort of offering.

And his scent…

It had the underlying stink of decay leaking from all of his pores.

John’s first instinct had been to bundle him up and take him to the hospital but Derek had hesitated. This wasn’t right, his senses had screamed, this doesn’t smell _like Stiles_.

But he had ignored his instincts and followed his boyfriend to the hospital, the sound of muffled yells beginning as soon as the ambulance doors had closed and the sirens rang.

Even now within the confines of the hospital he could still smell it.

Under the sterile smell of hospital and the faint scent of other doctors and nurses, Stiles smelled like _Death._

“Derek…? Is that… is that you?” Stiles quietly called out, his hands shaking against the smooth leather of the straps wrapped around his wrists. “Derek, please, I’m ok don’t leave me in here, please, I’m ok!”

“It’s… the doctors say it’s for your own good Stiles. Your dad and I just want you to be safe.”

“This is not safe, Derek, this is not safe at all!”

Secretly, Derek couldn’t help but agree.

The smell of death began to grow stronger within the room the more Stiles panicked, his eyes dilated to the point of being engulfed entirely by pupil.

Stiles felt his arms trembling, wrists feebly pulling at the smooth fabric stretched across the smooth planes of skin now a pale pink due to the painful strain.

He felt his eyesight narrow until Derek was a blur, a shadow of his former self.

‘ _stiles._ ’

No, this wasn’t ok.

‘ _what are you doing here stiles?_ ’

A hand wrapped its way around his wrist, decayed and void of color.

‘ _all you do is cause trouble for everyone stiles. look at what you’ve done now. why do you do these things son?_ ’

A discomforting cold swept through his body from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.

Stiles couldn’t figure out what it was he was supposed to be seeing.

Dark eyes hovered over his bed, those twisted hands reaching out, wanting to touch everything in their reach until there was nothing left of _him_ and everything of _her_.

“No, please, I want to go _home_.” Stiles pleaded with whoever would listen.

“Please?”

‘ _please?_ ’

_i need to go to my place… scott, where are you?_

“Why won’t anybody listen to me?”

“I’ll listen to you.”

Stiles turned his head to the side, eyes wide with trepidation and hope.

Scott stared down at his best friend, smile filled with unbridled warmth.

_this is my place_

_scott you came_

_i knew you wouldn’t forget me_

_not you_

“Don’t worry…” the brown eyed teen whispered in Stiles’ ear as he unwrapped the first leather strap from his left wrist. “I didn’t forget our promise. I know I’ve let you down… but I’ll save you this time. I _promise_.”

 


	9. i've got troubled thoughts (what a catch)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Teen Wolf, 
> 
> Stop making me ship all of Team Human together. 
> 
> I just can't. 
> 
> And Sciles. Definitely not the beautiful, bromantic paradise that is the Sciles.
> 
> This can't be a thing. 
> 
> Love,
> 
> Hari-Aisu
> 
> P.S.: NEEDS MOAR BROMANCE! :D GUESS WHAT, YOU GOT IT. ^.^ And I'm about to hit you right in the feels. Yes. 
> 
> IN THE FEELS. >:D

Stiles always tried really hard to ignore his mother when she got like this.

Staring down at his toy truck, he tried to ignore her wrenching sobs and the sound of things being broken, torn apart, thrown against the walls within the locked room the older woman inhabited when her episodes became ‘too much’.

It was mommy’s time out time and he knew he wasn’t supposed to interrupt her when she got like this, but-

He was hungry.

And lonely.                                                          

When was her time out time going to be over?

Stiles put the tiny cars and trucks to the side and tip-toed over to the door.

What his mother didn’t know…

The boy yelped as the door swung open, the older woman disheveled and leaning heavily on her left side.

“ _Stiles…_ ” Gwen whispered as she stared down at her son, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion and pain. “ _I think mommy needs a little bit of help._ ”

Stiles didn’t even hesitate in running to his mother, arms held out and hands shaking.

 

* * *

 

_when i think of you_

_i think of pain_

_and sadness._

_i hate how you still make me feel_

_with just a thought_

_or a memory_

_but i know the only person i can blome_

_for everything that’s happened_

_is myself._

* * *

_  
_

John felt his arm grown numb as he continued to lay on it, but refused to move even as the tingles became sharp pricks and the pricks began to border on painful. The picture that sat on the furthest shelf of the room mocked him with its peacefulness, framed in a beautiful mahogany brown setting offset by the intricate designs carved against the otherwise smooth wood. The woman in the picture, who smiled so beautifically that you wouldn’t have known that something was fundamentally _wrong_ with her unless you had actually known her, continued to hold onto the small boy who shared the same smile and bright-eyed visage. John, who was also in the picture, held on to the two figures with his own wide grin, not a worry set on his face.

At least none that you could see in a photograph.

Every day he wondered what he could have done differently to save her. God, even know he missed her. _The person she had been._ Before-

_“He’s going to be amazing, John” Gwen whispered as she stroked her stomach tenderly “I feel it. He’s gonna take over the world and he’ll do it with my brains and your heart. You’ll see.”_

_“Why not my brains and your heart?” John smirked as he pulled his wife closer to his chest._

_“I’m not even going to answer that question, that’s how very nice I am.”_

_“Oh, gee thanks.”_

Stiles looked at himself and only saw the worst parts of his mother relived but John knew better now. The woman she had been had drifted away but she still lived in their son. That smile. Those eyes. Those thoughts.

Those _thoughts._

_“I really hate this color.”_

_“But you were the one that was so adamant about this shade of blue. You said, ‘John, this is it. I have to have it. This is the color of our son’s life and you can’t tell me otherwise.’ You said that, I swear to God.”_

_“I changed my mind. This is horrible. Don’t let me make anymore decisions ever again.”_

_“Oh my God.”_

He couldn’t live with himself knowing the probability of Stiles having to stay in that _place_ , not when her words still circulated in his head. Cries of _don’tleaveme, whydoyouhateme, ithoughtyoulovedme, ihateyouihateyouihateyou!_ still burned in his ears when the silence became too much. John couldn’t function, not while his son was in that hospital suffering in ways that he couldn’t understand. It just… it wasn’t right.

_“He’s our miracle… what’s there not to love about him already?” Gwen smiled patiently as she stared out at the ocean horizon, the cool waves lapping at her toes._

_“What if I screw him up?”_

_The younger woman gave the deputy a strange stare, the silence now strained and tense._

_“Out of the both of us, you’re the one who’s worried about screwing him up?”_

John sniffed as his lips pulled up into a smirk, no humor to be traced on his face.

“Naw… I did all the screwing up after all, Gwennie. Just like I was scared I would.”

 

* * *

 

_stiles smiled up at his friend as he led him through the hospital window, a heavy fog permeating the room so that all stiles could focus on was Scott._

_everything was going to be fine now._

_his best friend was here to make everything better, just like he promised._

_‘_ But what about Derek?’ _a sly voice whispered in stiles’ ear, panicked and ladened with nervous energy._

_derek?_

_derek, who? stiles wondered._

_Scott continued to smile as he held onto to the slim teen’s hand, golden brown eyes now tinted a bluish-gray._

_that name’s not important…_

_i’m here, stiles._

_remember?_

* * *

 

Scott felt his mouth drop in shock as he shut the window behind him, the anxiousness that had been building from Scott’s departure from Deaton’s to Stiles’ hospital room now a full blown panic attack.

Where Stiles should have been, strapped in the bed and sedated, was empty air and disheveled hospital sheets. And where he expected to see Derek in the shadows (because anyone who knew what their relationship was like now knew that Derek would _never_ leave Stiles when he truly needed him) was nothing but that, _shadows._

On the floor is where the Alpha wolf laid, head bashed in and completely unconscious.

Suddenly the Beta wolf had a feeling that this wouldn’t be _quite_ as easy as he was expecting it to be.

“ _Shit._ ”

 

* * *

 

 

_stiles smiled up at his best friend as he led him through the thick foliage, hand held tightly within his own._

_the floaty feeling from before comforted him as much as it made him shutter, his mind rebelling even as it embraced the apathetic fog settled over his human senses. everytime stiles felt like pulling his hand away, Scott would look at him._

_he’d smile._

_and those precious eyes glowed with such profound happiness that stiles couldn’t find the will to really run away._

_why run?_

_it was Scott. Scott made him_ happy _._

_even as he felt the need to run, he felt the same pulse propel him forward._

_it had been so long since he had last been happy…_

_hadn’t it?_

_Stiles-_

_Couldn’t-_

_Remember._

_The urge to pull away and run thrummed throughout Stiles’ body but he couldn’t pull away._

_Slowly, Scott’s face melted away in clumps of skin and hair and bones and all Stiles could do was scream and scream-_

His hand was trapped in a vice, steel hard and made of something older and denser than bone.

Amber brown eyes stared down at his face, the misshapen face blurring over and contorting until _her face was all that was left, eyes shining with pain but lips pulled up into a_ _smile._

_‘stiles… mommy missed you so much.’_

_and it was as if stiles had fallen all over again._

 

* * *

 

 

Derek gasped as he felt the claws dig into his abdomen and _goddamnit could he stop being everyone’s damn pin cushion?!_

“Scott, what the _HELL?”_ The older werewolf cringed, standing up and swaying almost immediately after doing so.

“Shut up!” Scott mock-shouted as he pulled Derek back onto the floor, eyes shifting over to the still-closed door. “I know you know how to be stealthy so use some common sense and _be stealthy damn it_.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Scott? Where’s- _where the hell is Stiles?!_ ”

“I don’t know!” The Beta wolf cried out, frustrated beyond belief. “You were the one that was here, why don’t you tell me?!”

“He was… he was right there.” Derek muttered. “He was… talking to me about getting him out of here. And I told him that he had to stay.  He started… he started crying. That’s all I can remember.”

“Nothing else?”

“ _No_.” Derek growled.

“Not even whoever hit you on the head?”

The aforementioned wound, which was now no more than just a smear of blood coagulating against the 24-year-old’s hairline, was prodded at. The area wasn’t even sore, signifying that the brunt of impact had happened had long enough ago that he had ample time to heal but not long enough for the blood to be completely dried and crusty against Derek’s scalp.

“I can’t… I can’t even remember being _hit_.”

“Shit, shit, shit, this is bad.”

“What are you talking about, Scott?”

“This is what I mean when I tell you that I don’t like you for your stupid personality Derek, you _don’t_ freaking _listen to people_! I _told you_ he didn’t like hospitals! I told you that he wouldn’t be ok with this, that you should trust Stiles’ words a bit more even if his actions are completely _crazy_. Didn’t you smell his wound? How it wasn’t _healing_?! Wasn’t that a big give away that _maybe_ this wasn’t all Stiles’ head, Derek!”

“But… what?” Derek looked as confused and angry as ever. “His wound is fine. He hasn’t been complaining about it for the last couple of days and I didn’t smell… anything.”

Suddenly the look on Derek’s face became incredibly stony.

“I didn’t smell anything, Scott. Not even the blood and skin healing over it. I… _didn’t smell anything._ ”

“Because it _wasn’t healing_!”

“No, you idiot!” The now panicking Alpha snarled down at the teenaged werewolf. “I _didn’t smell anything_! As in, not even the wound itself!”

“Oh…” Scott felt his face fall from its former indignation. “ _Fucking shit to end all shits_.”

 

* * *

 

 

_Stiles stared up at his mother, smiling._

_Gwen, however, wasn’t._

_He hadn’t-_

_He hadn’t_ done _anything._

_Why was she so mad?_

_“Mommy, are you ok?”_

_Gwen stayed silent, eyes focused on a point over Stiles’ shoulder._

_“Mommy?”_

 

* * *

 

 

“We need to track him somehow.” Derek gritted out, eyes continuously flashing a crimson red.

“I can smell him.” The younger wolf retorted, his eyes a blazing crisp gold.

Derek stared at the wolf, the scarlet gaze returning with a vengeance. “What.”

Scott rolled his eyes, not understanding how Stiles could find a man who couldn’t even punctuate appealing. “I don’t know how but I can smell him. His scent is still… I don’t know, fresh to me. You really can’t smell it?”

If looks could maim and murder, Scott was sure he would be beyond saving at this point.

“If I did, don’t you think I would have already have tried tracking him down by now?” Instead of waiting for a response, Derek pulled his phone out and began a mass text. “We need to be careful about this. Whoever has him obviously knows enough magic to mess with my abilities, though why it hasn’t thought to mess with yours I have no idea.”

Scott scrunched up his nose, the small warmth kindling within his chest at the thought now settled inside him. “I’m safe.”

“And that means what, exactly. That I’m not?”

“No, man, not… it’s not anything against you and your love-life or whatever you’re thinking. I just… me and Stiles are like tied somehow. Stiles and I… we’re just safe when we’re together, ya know?”

Though from the stiff onset of Derek’s shoulders it would seem as if no, he did _not_ get the concept. And Scott really didn’t have the luxury of time to try to explain to a grumpster of a twenty-year-old what it meant to be so close that blood connection meant nothing, whereas the emotional connection meant _everything._

“He’s my brother. If he goes down…” Scott swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I go down with him or fight trying to make sure we both stay afloat.”

Derek couldn’t help but admire the perserverance his lover and his best friend both had for each other. Even when the chips were done and the odds were leveled against them, Scott and Stiles didn’t stop fighting for each other. This went past a normal friendship and ascended into brotherhood, the one thing that Derek had attempted to bridge between Scott and himself that the stubborn Beta had refused from the get go.

When Derek saw the relationship that Scott held with Stiles, he could admit to being a little… ok, _very_ jealous.

But things were different now.

Derek couldn’t imagine his life without the annoying, sarcastic human and if Scott could lead them right to his partner, he would take what he could get.

“And you haven’t followed the scent yet, why?! Get going, Scott, we don’t have any more time to lose!”

He couldn’t lose anymore people.

And he definitely would not lose Stiles.

 

* * *

 

 

_It felt like a million daggers_

_Stabbing at his chest._

_He didn’t know where he was_

_Or who he was with_

_But he knew he was in_ pain

_And he couldn’t wake up._

_Not._

_To._

_This._

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles knew that he wasn’t dreaming.

At least it felt that way.

Kind of.

The man behind his mother smiled, the face darkening along with his mom’s in a strange mimicry.

There wasn’t a shred of love to be had here.

And Stiles knew.

He wasn’t dreaming.

This was past dreaming and was in a whole different stream of consciousness altogether.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles could barely remember how it happened.

That last time.

He had been playing in his room when it all began, that was the only thing he was sure of now.

Gwen had been whispering to herself more and more lately, speaking to figures that weren’t actually there. The shadows in the room became bodies and the creaks in the house became voices, all of them telling her to do something that Stiles could not understand.

Not at first, anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

“Gwen, where’s Stiles?!” John pleaded as he grabbed his bleeding wife, hands trying to wrap the sheets around the woman’s bleeding arms and wrists.

“John…  help me.” Gwen’s vacant expression began to clear, eyes growing wide with panic as they took in _all the blood her blood whywasshebleeding?!_ “Help me please!”

“Gwen… calm down. I’m going to call 911 but you need to tell me where Stiles is!” The older man tried to reign the panicking woman to no avail. Gwen pushed at her husband, screaming one moment and muttering strange things the next.

“I can’t get it off… I can’t… Help… me… it’s not coming off, it’s all black and red and blue and I want it off, all of it _OFF!_ ”

“Gwennie… Gwen. Don’t, don’t, you’re going to go into shock honey, you need to stay calm. Stiles, where is Stiles?!”

Gwen stalled for a moment, a crack of lucidity barrelling head first into her consciousness. “I don’t… know?”

God damn it.” Instead of giving into the temptation of throwing the hysterical but still bleeding woman onto the ground, John rewound the sheets against the deepest cuts wrapped around her wrists and gently let the woman fall to the floor.

 

* * *

 

 

She had been feeling particularly keyed up that day.

He hadn’t known why.

In the end, it had hardly mattered.

Stiles had tried to keep away, to not draw attention to himself but as in most things in life, he was not successful.

As she raged in the hallway in front of his room, he whimpered and sobbed, wanting it all to stop. He had tried to hold it all in.

Really.

He had.

 

* * *

 

“ _Mommy, stop! I’m sorry!_ ”

“Why do you do this, Stiles?! Why do you make me _hurt you?!_ ”

“Mommy, _PLEASE!_ ”

 

* * *

 

She had taken him and broken him in ways that he still hadn’t healed from. It was like a broken bone that wouldn’t quite heal right no matter how much time you left it alone.

And that was the problem, wasn’t?

He always left it alone.

Stiles lived in an infinite loop of pain and blame.

You always hurt the ones you love right?

He was good at that.

So good, it was scary.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles tried to keep his grip on his side as he ran down the hallway and down the stairs but the pain of trying to dodge and the large bruise now covering the entire right side of his torso.

He could hear his mother behind him, steps loud and hectic.

_Breathe in…_

Stiles knew he was running out of breath, lungs burning with little air to sustain them. His throat burned, large fingerprints shadowing the pale skin like a series of stains.

_Breathe out._

He couldn’t run for much longer, not when she was right behind him and so much bigger and faste-

_Why do I feel pain, why is my arm hurt, why does she look scared, why am I on the ground?_

Gwen let go of Stiles’ arm as if it had burned her, cheeks a bright flourescent pink and mouth a pale stretch of a line.

The strangled crack echoed between them, Stiles’ left arm dangling from the elbow down like a fabric doll’s immitation.

Large, fat tears rolled down the small boy’s cheeks but he did not move. The pain in his arm began to swivel up his body but he ignored it.

 _“_ Why… why do you keep hurting me?” Stiles whispered anguishly.

“I…”

* * *

 

 

_‘I don’t know.’_

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles ran.

There was no better way to put it.

He ran.

Because in her eyes there had been no blame or anger.

In that moment, there had been nothing but confusion.

And how can you be confused when just seconds earlier you broke your only son’s arm?

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles knew the moment that his mother went into her own head that that was the time to run.

Without any thought to where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there, the small boy ran to the only place he knew she couldn’t get him.

‘Please don’t find me, just let me hide, I can’t keep doing this.’

Shutting the pantry door behind him, Stiles went into his safe place and curled up in his special spot.

He was always being a bad boy.

Even with his arm hurting and his body aching he knew that he needed to be punished.

* * *

 

_‘Why do you always hurt me?’_

_‘Because I can’t stop myself from doing so.’_

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Stiles?!_ ”

Stiles felt himself shiver but stayed where he was, cradling his left arm against his chest as gently as he could without hurting himself even more than he was already hurt.

He wanted to let his pop-pop know where he was, how badly he was hurt.

But mommy always said…

She said not to say anything.

It was an accident.

It was _always_ _an_ _accident_.

Tears streamed down his face as the pain became unbearable.

It was hard to even keep his eyes open anymore.

It all hurt so much.

Stiles felt his world shift as the cupboard door opened.

His large brown eyes squinted as they peered up at the giant figure looming over them, arms shivering as they were held as tightly against his chest as possible.

“ _Stiles?!_ ”

Everything was going to change.

He could feel it the moment his father’s face became less suspicious and more mortified then panicked and finally outraged.

Stiles licked his cracked lips as the blood trickling down his forehead tickled his mouth.

“ _Gwen what the hell did you do?!_ ”

Everything was going to change.

Why did that feel so wrong to think?

Stiles knew…

And the world was fading as his own asylum came crumbling down.

“ _HE’S MY SON! MINE! DON’T TOUCH HIM! DON’T TOUCH HIM!”_

_“Gwen get a hold of yourself, NOW!”_

Everything hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain he felt in his heart.

It pounded so much he just knew it was going to come out of his chest.

Stiles wanted his mommy.

She would make it better. Once he was good again she would make all the boo-boos go away. She would.

“ _No, no, no, get off of me, GET AWAY FROM ME NOW! STILES! BABY! STILES, YOU DON’T GO WITH THOSE PEOPLE! GET AWAY FROM ME!_ ”

But now she was going to go away and Stiles knew that no amount of pleading would bring her back.

“ _Stiles…?_ ”

Large brown eyes blinked back tears as his father’s tall figure came forward, arms stretched out like some sort of savior.

Stiles ran to his father and held on tight. If this was all he could have for now, then he would cherish it.

“ _Give me my son! Stiles! STILES!_ ”

Closing his eyes, Stiles began to hum.

‘ _I_ _love you mommy._ ’

A rush of paramedics and police officers surrounded the tiny boy, still quietly humming to himself.

 

* * *

 

 

_‘i love you more than you’ll ever know.’_

* * *

 

He had not wanted her stuck in that hospital.

It had been two years of institution-jumping, no place quite ready to take on Gwendolyn Stilinski.

Stiles had been sick of the routine.

He had just wanted his mother back.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles blinked as he stared at the sheets surrounding his mother’s body, milky white and ruffled by the movement of her legs. Her arms, which were strapped down to the bed underneath the sheets, twitched and convulsed from time to time.

Unhealthily thin hands gripped the cloth of the bed.

He could tell by the movements her fingers kept making underneath the covers.

She was so uncomfortable…

Stiles looked up into his mother’s eyes (but they didn’t look like his mother’s, not really, not anymore) and felt a surge of strength rise within his chest.

 

* * *

 

 

He had wanted her back and the hospital was in the way of that.

Why wouldn’t Stiles try to free her?

Maybe then…

Maybe then she would consider him good again.

 

* * *

 

 

“Dad?” The young boy turned to his father, eyes wide with innocence. “Can you get me some water?”

John barely nodded, rushing out of the room without a word.

He didn’t notice as Stiles’ fingers crept underneath the blanket and gently pulled at the taut leather underneath.

As soon as her hands were free, Gwen felt her mouth twitch into a semi-smile. Stiles grinned up at his mother, proud to have made her so happy. “Did I do good, mommy?”

“So good, baby.” Gwen answered absently, stretching her fingers and twisting her wrists with a vigor. “Do you wanna play a game with mommy, darling?”

 

* * *

 

 

He should have known better. And maybe he had.

Maybe, just maybe, he had subconsciously known that his mother wasn’t ever going to get better.

* * *

 

“Game! I love games! Daddy just bought me a new Playstation… I played it all this morning!”

“That’s nice, Stiles. Now we are going to play a different kind of game.” Quickly pulling herself off of the bed after unwrapping the straps holding her legs down, Gwen grabbed her son’s hand and pulled him to the door.

The hallway was void of anyone, even the random stragglers that the hospital seemed to always be filled with. Hefting Stiles up on her arms, Gwen made her way out of the door and slipped down the hallway, already having a destination set in mind.

She couldn’t do this anymore.

She couldn’t keep going in this hospital-induced stupor. 

Her cold, clammy fingers had trembled as they snuck past all the guards and made their way towards one of the storage rooms

“I just need to grab something Stiles, don’t worry. Mommy is going to be quick.”

 

* * *

 

 

How was he supposed to know?

How was he supposed to know that not getting better meant permanently falling apart?

* * *

 

Once they reached out back through the kitchen doors, Stiles could hear his father’s panicking voice grow all the shriller until it was a grating screech ringing throughout the hallways. The patients became increasingly unstable the louder John became, (stiles remembered) flitting bodies flinging from wall to wall through the barred windows screaming alongside the unknown (to them) voice until one of the heavy-looking men in white began to restrain and muffle the police man.

“Everything is going to be ok now, I swear. I won’t let anything happen to you… It’s just. It’s just me.”

The woods had seemed so large and ominous to him but when he opened his mouth to tell his mother he was becoming afraid she continued to lead him forward, pushing him past the fear and into another realm of anxiety entirely

“After this, we’re both going to be ok.”

Stiles stared up at his mother as she stopped in front of a tree and stifled a sob.

“I can’t keep hurting you like this…” Gwen fell to the ground in a stumble, looking up at the sky with tears in her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Stiles?”

The young boy didn’t flinch as the older woman turned towards him.

He would never forget that last look, eyes shining and mouth smiling brokenly at him.

“I love you, son.”

 

* * *

 

 

It was beautiful.

I felt something inside of me in that moment that I hadn’t felt in so long.

My ten-year-old self didn’t understand what the emotion was as I felt it but as I got older I realized what it was.

I felt _liberated_.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles felt his world shift as he watched his mother fall.

Her hair billowed behind her like a curtain, dead and knotted as the breeze caught the few strains that weren’t obscuring her face.

Her eyes, though.

They were empty.

And her hands were covered in nothing but _red_.

 

* * *

 

He had tried to save her in so many different ways in his mind.

That last moment was the defining moment in Stiles’ life.

He could never be the hero.

Not when he couldn’t save the one person who had been crying out for help and had still drowned in her own pool of self-loathing.

 

* * *

 

 

_‘mommy, what’s wrong?’_

_‘baby… you have to follow me, ok?’_

_‘… mommy?’_

_‘don’t you want to make me happy?’_

_‘yes, mommy.’_

_‘i love you baby.’_

_‘i love you too!’_

 

* * *

 

 

How could he save Scott, Derek or his dad if he couldn’t save her?

He had let her down, let her fall in a way that no son should ever have a hand in.

He had killed his mother.

And now, everything comes _full circle_.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles felt his face scrunch up as he gathered his mother in his arms, tears blotting his chubby cheeks and chin. But the blood kept coming and his mother, her breath was coming out faster and so much more shallow.

He didn’t know a lot of things but he knew what death look like, even at such a young age.

“Mommy.” The tiny brunet cried out as he held on, flashing lights hazily breaking through the foliage. “Mommy, please don’t leave me.”

Gwen said nothing, throat gurgling as the blood seeping from her throat coated her lips.

Stiles continued to hold on.

It was the only thing left to do.

 

* * *

 

 

_‘I’m so sorry…’_

_Gwen smiled eerily as she held on to the young man._

_‘I’m so… sorry.’_

_Pin pricks of pain blossomed over the spots the older woman’s hands trailed, tiny rivulets of blood caressing the pale skin underneath it._

_‘I thought I was doing something good and instead I let you go. I didn’t even know what I was doing… I just knew you wanted to be free and I hated seeing you so unhappy.’_

_‘Oh son…’_

_‘I know I shouldn’t I have done it. I know I deserve this…’_

_‘Shh…’_

_‘I think... I deserve to die.'_

"Yes."

* * *

 

Pale green eyes glowed, meshing seemlessly into a vibrant crimson red.

* * *

 

"You do."

* * *

 

Stiles felt his lungs contract as he opened his mouth and just _breathed_. Scott was staring down at him, chestnut brown eyes wide and worried.

“Dude! Stay with me, Stiles, you’re gonna be ok!”

As soon as the words were spoken, an inhuman screech reverberated throughout the large, damp room both men seemed to be inhabiting and rocked them both to the core. Stiles tried to lift his head up but was unsuccesful in that regard.

He could make out Derek in the shadows, wolf out in full display. The other creature, the same _fucking_ fairy that Stiles had pissed off whom he would recognize a mile a-fucking-way screamed again, this time in absolute pain.

Though Derek’s claws protruding from it’s abdomen and slicing across its waist might attribute to that.

Stiles could barely believe that that was all it took.

As the fae lay there bleeding heavily, guts splayed out in some artistic display of disecration, a shimmer of something shifts in its face until it melts away and-

 _Shit_.

“Stiles…” Not-Gwen whispered as the thing’s body decayed right in front of their eyes and scattered into the wind like ashes “I’ve got you. _Always_.”

And the sad part was, it did.

It _really_ did.

The Alpha werewolf gave one last roar and raised his claws to decimate it one last time.

Stiles closed his eyes and he _remembered_.

He remembered golden-amber eyes and his smile and her cheek bones.

He remembered tinkling laughs and absent daydreams.

Short attention spans and random tangents filled with laughter and faux-indignation.

He remembered the mother that had loved him, however briefly.

And he cherished it.

“C’mon, bro.” Scott’s voice filtered in, deep and safe. “Let’s go home.”

Stiles blinked once before he felt his eyes grow heavy, the sight of Derek and Scott standing over him contrasting greatly against each other. Derek snarled viciously, blood dripping down his fangs and chin, eyes blazing with rage and concern all at once as Scott stood solemn, body slumped and eyes full of sorrow.

It was the last image he managed to hold onto before everything became an unsettling black.

 

* * *

 

 

_Gwen stared down at the baby within the crib, eyes glimmering with unshed tears._

_She couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t get her head straight but she had to figure something out or else everything would fall apart and she would just be proving everyone who ever doubted her right._

_She needed to get herself together._

_John was the love of her life._

_Her baby needed her now that he was here._

_Gwen just needed a little bit more time…_

_The tiny infant snuffled against the pillow smushed against his face, tiny face scrunching up with irritation for only a moment before it smoothed out and fell motionless once again._

_Everything would be just fine._

_She had to believe that._


	10. interlude iii: can't explain a thing (i want everything)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we had a lot of angst this week. 
> 
> I'm here to give you something to smile about. 
> 
> I know, after last chapter that sounds weird to say but here's the last interlude! Hopefully it will make some of you kind of happy-ish...? 
> 
> (My poor baby Boyd, my poor baby Derek JEFFDAVISHOWCOULDYOU?! Ok, I'm done) 
> 
> Enjoy the final interlude! :D
> 
> P.S.: How the hell is this the longest chapter in the story? WTF? o.o;

 

Now, Derek never meant for his _thing_ with Stiles to interfere with his _thing_ with the pack. As far as Derek was concerned, those were two completely separate _things_.

Two completely different _things_ that should never, ever merge.

 _Ever_.

Because Stiles was Stiles and the pack was… well, the pack. And Derek was the Alpha now.

So there.

Logic achieved.

Unfortunately, Stiles did not feel as if this was so.

The sneaky bastard was ultimately what the 24-year-old werewolf would dub to be the Pack Ninja, quietly intruding on pack business as if it were perfectly normal and not at all creepy as fuck, get out.

Derek felt like it was retribution for something ( _Stiles would cut in and say being a creeper_ _of the greatest power_ ) but he refused to think about what.

Eventually, despite Derek’s obstinate _No_ ’s and _Damn it Stiles You. Are. Not. Welcome. Here. Get the hell out!’s,_ the younger of the two men was not deterred by his boyfriend’s constant grumpiness and firm glares filled with nope. All of the nope. All of the nope _forever_.

He had a goal and damn Derek if he got in the way of that.

Which, _what the fucking Hell Stiles?_

Derek wasn’t sure if he was even in control of his life anymore. Knowing Stiles, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had somehow managed to ninja his damn life choices at this point too.

So those two _things_ eventually became one colossal _Thing_ , leading him to believe that his Betas must have known that Derek wasn’t the one really running the show and it was better to have the real leader on your side when you were in a bind and not smirking at you from the corner while eating a bag of Doritos and laughing obnoxiously at all of your life’s failures.

Not that Derek had any experience with that.

None whatsoever.

The pack learned quickly that Derek’s Alpha routine wasn’t the real deal but it took some time for them to realize that Stiles’ role was a lot more prominent than just flailing around looking spastic and making a hundred sarcastic remarks in retaliation to whatever punch (metaphorical or otherwise) was thrown his way.

 _Stiles_ was the real force to be reckoned with in the pack and Derek just couldn’t even deal with it anymore.

He gave up, damn it.

* * *

 

 _Boyd_.

 

* * *

 

The first time that Derek had caught Boyd deferring to Stiles had been the night after his and Stiles’ third date. Derek had still been a mass of nerves, not sure where the relationship was going and whether or not he would ever get rid of the fear of being watched by the Sheriff and his group of Deputies stationed oh-so-conviently at every corner whenever he and Stiles both had a date.

He had pleaded with the younger man to stop giving the Sheriff the locations of all of their hang out spots but he had been given the patented Stiles eye-roll and sarcastic remark, letting him know right off the bat that _no_ , he was not going to be listened to, thanks.

_What was even his life with this 18-year-old brat?_

Derek had wanted Boyd’s input on what he should do about the whole incident (of all of his Betas, Boyd was definitely his favorite) when he walked in on the dark-skinned teenager sitting on the floor of his loft, hands kneading a pair of milky-white feet and staring intently at the other teenager’s face as they spoke quietly.

“You shouldn’t be afraid to tell her how you feel,” Stiles smiled as he shifted on the hard cement floor, obviously uncomfortable but not willing to move while so engrossed in their conversation “the both of you are compatible and you connect on a level that a lot of people would kill for. She is waiting for you to make the first move but if you keep her waiting then you might lose your chance at something real, ya know?”

“But… she’s my first friend.” Boyd whispered haltingly. “I don’t want to lose that.”

“And you don’t have to. Your friendship can come first but don’t let a relationship scare you away from making it _more_. If it doesn’t work out, that’s it. Things might not stay the exact same but you’ll only alienate her if you keep going at this weird pace. _Trust me_.”

Derek felt a pit of warmth dig deeper within his abdomen as Stiles put a hand on his Beta’s shoulder and nudged him closer to his person. Boyd followed the movement without any hesitation, all while still massaging the amber-eyed teen’s feet.

‘ _If you like it then you should definitely put a ring on it!_ ’

Derek frowned at the familiar voice echoing inside his head, already knowing that his alloted Stiles Teaching You Brand New Contemprary Relevant Things Time was filled for the week.

He let the two continue with their moment, blending back into the shadows and being the Creeper that Stiles always accused him of being.

 

* * *

 

_Erica._

 

* * *

 

Both Erica and Stiles had seemed to hit it off as soon as the “I hit you with a heavy thing once, sorry for that by the way. Yeah, I went there” was out of the way on Erica’s part.

Stiles had been much too impressed by her gall to actually care about the apology, but Derek doubted he forgot about the incident seeing as Derek _still_ got shit over the head-bouncing-off-of-the-steering-wheel thing.

And the slamming-into-walls thing.

And the manhandling thing.

And the general being-a-crappy-Alpha-let-alone-a-werewolf thing.

( _In Stiles’ well known opinion, Derek failed at life in general but that was neither here nor there._ )

There were so many things that Derek couldn’t keep up with them all, the point was that Stiles might forgive but he sure as Hell didn’t forget and he would remind you of it every chance he could get, thanks.

Erica got her fair share of ribbing and prodding (and Scott-glaring if said repeating of incident was done while he was in the vicinity) but she took none of it to heart, willing to give Stiles as good as he gave.

Which was pretty brutal but both teenagers were ok with that.

The Beta she-wolf was particularly clingy to the older teen, hogging him in her ‘room’ at the most inconvenient times of the day (and on one particularly strange occasion, night). Derek wasn’t naturally inclined to being nosey but he was inclined to keeping tabs on his pack (slash-Stiles) and grew curious about what they would do in the tiny shack of a room, away from the prying eyes of… well, just Derek’s prying eyes.

But those were the most important so there.

On one particularly well-remembered occasion when Derek’s curiosity could no longer be ignored, Derek planted his phone within the room, calling from a disposable cell phone to keep tabs on what exactly was going on from the safety of his own bedroom.

(That isn’t a creepy thing to do. It isn’t. Stop it.)

The conversation he listened to was definitely not what he imagined it would be.

“ _C’mon…_ ”

“ _No. That’s private._ ”

“ _Stiles, you wouldn’t know what private was if it sat on your lap and asked if you wanted a lap dance. Now tell me the truth…_ ”

“ _Fine, but you can’t tell Derek about this ok? He would hate me forever if he knew I was telling you this._ ”

At this, Derek froze.

He kept his breathing steady, so that Erica wouldn’t pick up on it from the phone.

This was _not good_.

Derek could feel it.

“ _Ok… so, I might have cheated last night and did exactly what I said I wouldn’t do the last time we talked_.”

What.

Just, _what_.

Erica had the nerve to _laugh_ , stomping on her Alpha’s pain with a sharp squeak of a giggle.

“ _I couldn’t help myself. They were there and I was there and all I kept thinking to myself was ‘he doesn’t have to know… nobody has to know I’m doing this…’ and I did it. I fell into temptation and now I feel horrible._ ”

“ _Oh God… this is_ priceless _._ ”

This was _madness_.

“ _And I didn’t just stop at once. Oh no, I did it at least seven or eight times. It was_ so _addictive. God just thinking about it again…_ ”

Derek blocked out Erica’s screech, eyes large with wonder.

“ _Do you think Derek’ll find out?_ ”

“ _Oh, he will. He always knows when I do it._ ”

Of course he-

Wait, _WHAT_.

THERE HAS BEEN NO FORMER DOING OF ANYTHING.

“ _He likes to pretend that he doesn’t secretly like it, but Erica. He is like so into it. I remember one time he did it like four times before I had to pull him away. He was more into it than I was I think_.”

No.

Just.

No.

What was Stiles even talking about. This was not correct at all.

“ _And he is so cute when he does it. I think if I break him down enough, I’ll be able to get him to get me one. Can you imagine?_ ”

Derek was so confused that he was pretty sure that Scott knew better than he did right now.

“ _I think the pack would benefit from having a puppy. Werewolf jokes be damned if I don’t get a doggy in this loft by next month. Derek loves those puppies more than I do._ ”

Derek felt his mouth shut with a snap.

“ _That would be-wait. Did you hear that?_ ”

Oh shit.

“ _Uh… I don’t have werewolf super hearing so that would be a no._ ”

“ _I could have sworn I heard something come from this corner…_ ”

Derek quickly ended the call and shoved the phone under his mattress.

He knew _nothing_.

And no, he didn’t like puppies. Stiles had no idea what he was talking about.

_Shut up._

 

* * *

 

_Isaac._

 

* * *

 

Both Isaac and Stiles got along very well.

And Derek wasn’t even kidding.

There was no hump to go over.

No Scott-shaped hole to dig out of.

Yeah, they did get into some kind of territory thing from time to time when it came to Scott but Stiles and Isaac genuinely liked each other otherwise.

It was a travesty, really.

“Here, you need more food on your plate if you expect to grow up to be a nice werewolf like your Alpha-daddy over there.”

Seriously, Derek was going to kill the both of them.

“Can I get some extra juice too?”

Kill them _so dead_.

“Of course you can darling.”

Erica smirked as she watched Isaac transform into a complete cuddle-slut and envelope Stiles into a full embrace, the food cooling on the table, abandoned and forgotten.

“And Isaac uses glomp-attack;” the blonde murmured underneath her palm “it’s super effective!”

“My babies know about Pokemon.” Stiles sniffled into Isaac’s curls “all of my life choices have been correct so far.”

“I’m gonna go watch some TV.” Boyd shook his head, giving Derek a look of complete understanding. “I don’t think I’ve adapted to this yet.”

He knew who his favorite in the pack was and he definitely took after Derek.

“Can we watch “Finding Nemo” after I finish eating?” Isaac pleaded as he pulled away from the never-ending source of warmth that was Stiles.

“Of course we can! I’ll grab my laptop and we’ll go into Derek’s room so we can lie down and snuggle for a bit!”

The strange thing about that sentence was that it _wasn’t weird._

 _Why wasn’t it weird_?!

“Now eat your food before Derek has a coniption.” Stiles patted Isaac on the head and strolled back into the area that was used as the kitchen, apron still settled over his torso. “I don’t think he can handle so much cute all at once.”

Derek needed a new life.

“Thanks Stiles!”

This one was too much for him to handle anymore.

* * *

 

_Peter._

 

* * *

 

Derek knew that trying to develop a relationship between his undead uncle and his skeeved out boyfriend was not a Good Idea (Caps Necessary). Stiles had his stupid No Pete, No Me rule which Derek violated frequently (or more appropriately said, _Peter_ violated frequently because of reasons only Peter were privy too) and with no remorse.

He knew it was a dick move but honestly, Derek was a dick. It was the foundation of their relationship really.

Other than Stiles being a dick, but that went without saying.

“I’m going to go home now!” Stiles snatched his laptop and bag and backed away from the two werewolves like a frightened animal, not realizing that such a tactic would make himself seem more appealing than normal. “The rule stands, damn it!”

“I don’t know why we can’t just get along, Stiles. You’re practically family.” Peter smirked as he took a step closer to the younger teen, full-out grinning once Stiles took off like a shot. “Really, Derek? That’s the one you choose? He’s got some spark but still leaves a lot to be desired.”

“You wanted him first.” Derek accused, remembering just why Stiles felt especially off-kilter in Peter’s presence. At the time he had felt a surge of jealousy boil in his stomach, wondering if he should be keeping an eye out for his uncle in case he felt that Stiles would be more than just a good edition to the pack-family but he came to realize that Peter didn’t look at Stiles with same hunger that Derek did.

It was a lot more complicated than just simple _want_ and it just served as a reminder that his uncle was never going to be the same man he was before the fire.

“You really need to lay off of him if you expect him to ever tolerate you.”

“Tolerate,” the older Beta echoed “Not like?”

Derek didn’t even give the man an answer, letting his retreating form answer the question for him.

 

* * *

 

_Derek._

* * *

 

The thing is, these relationships came with their own set of consequences.

Stiles was not the only one who had to suffer through inter-pack relations.

Oh most definitely _not_. For Stiles came from his own pack, headed by Beacon Hills’ resident stubborn moral compass and all around annoyingly adorable Good Guy, Scott McCall. And Derek felt the wrath of what Stiles had dubbed ‘Team Human Along with Werewolf Friends’.

The humans were annoying.

The Beta wolf heading the stupid pack was even worse.

That was basically what Derek’s relationship with Stiles’ “other” pack amounted to.

At one time he would have thought about combining the two but Scott would never allow it. Scott was destined to be an Alpha, even if he didn’t quite know it. There was an odd red glow that would radiate from his eyes when push came to shove and the younger werewolf seemed quite capable of rising the ranks without need of killing anyone.

If anyone could do it, it would be Scott.

So they were two separate entities and Derek was mostly ok with that (even if the thought of Stiles belonging to another pack just about killed him inside) but it did make interacting with the people within said pack strange to say the least. Derek did not have any allies within Scott’s mish-mash of a group like Stiles did within his nor did he have some sparkling personality to win any of them over. He had lost any semblance of that a long time ago and he couldn’t see himself trying to fake it just to make things easier. Derek had learned that trying to be something you’re not didn’t help you in the long run, it just made things ten times harder.

So all he could hope for was for respect. Even a modicom of it could be accepted at this point.

Unfortunately even that much was pushing it with this pack.

 

* * *

 

_Allison._

* * *

 

Derek would like to reiterate that he and Allison were not in any way _friendly_ towards each other.

They were not friends.

They would _never_ be friends.

This was a universal understanding set between Argent and Hale, particularly Derek and Allison.

Fundamentally Allison knew that Derek didn’t kill her mother.

Fundamentally Derek knew that Allison had nothing to do with the fire that killed his family.

That didn’t make not liking each other any less prominent.

He didn’t even know why Stiles forced him to interact with the girl but apparently being the love of Scott’s life was kind of a big deal.

As if.

Argents were evil in ways that Alpha packs were evil. There were no clean cut lines like Stiles liked to believe there were. Derek would always look at the girl with suspicion, not counting her worthy in his eyes. Though he was sure the same could be said about himself when she thought about his connection with Stiles.

Allison seemed to operate under the assumption that he would drop Stiles at any given moment and she made sure that he knew that her bow and arrow were aimed, cocked and ready to shoot when that time came.

He was basically a bull’s eye waiting to happen and wasn’t that just a wonderful feeling?

“Derek.”

“Allison.”

That was basically the gist of their interactions.

Neither party was really all that bothered about it truth be told.

And Stiles was perfectly ok with keeping it the way it was, thanks.

 

* * *

 

_Lydia._

* * *

 

As expected, Derek had a rough time befriending Lydia.

And by befriending, Derek meant _tolerating_.

Derek couldn’t tolerate Lydia.

At all.

And this had nothing to do with her being Stiles’ former love interest.

She was annoying and fake and borderline psychotic in a way that would have other people wonder how she managed to wrap it all up in the pretty way that she did and not go insane by the dumbed visage she had adapted so many years ago.

She was a genius hiding a hideous monster underneath a beautiful façade _and no that does not sound familiar, shut the fuck up Stiles._

“Stiles, why haven’t you moved on to someone with an actual house instead of a serial killer’s wet dream?” Lydia off handedly asked as she flicked through their bestiary, not even sparing Derek a glance to defend himself. “I’m starting to think you have a type.”

“Well coming from someone still dating the lizard-turned-werewolf douchebag that is Jackson Whittemore I don’t think I can really do much worse.” Stiles shot back, not even looking the least bit offended on Derek’s behalf.

Though considering he had just been complaining about the loft/lair (“ _Stiles, stop calling it a damn lair!_ ” “ _When you stop living in a lair, I’ll stop calling it one!_ ”) that inhabited Derek’s pack, the ignored wolf should have been grateful that he was being defended at all.

“I mean I could be dating creepy uncle Peter. I’m pretty sure that would be pretty bad. Worse than Derek, anyway.”

“So I’m a step above my undead, psychotic uncle.” Derek cut in, deadpan. “Good to know how much of a catch I am.”

“Hun, you’re lucky we don’t psychoanalyze you where you stand and tear you apart emotionally piece by piece until you’re a crying puddle of self-flaggelation overrunning with guilt complexes and suicidal tendencies.” Lydia smirked. “Be grateful for the little things and do what you do best; stand there and look pretty.”

Stiles shrugged, silently agreeing.

“I hate this pack.”

“Don’t worry, minus Stiles-“ the strawberry-blonde goddess that was Lydia Martin flicked her hair to the side and preened “we hate you, too.”

 _Joy_.

 

* * *

 

_Jackson._

* * *

 

Jackson would forever be Derek’s biggest regret.

Forever.

 _Forever_.

Ok, maybe not his biggest regret, but Derek had a top ten list ( _and no, that wasn’t depressing_ ) and Jackson was _at least_ within the number two-through-five spots depending on what Derek’s mood was that day and whether he had, had contact with Scott at any given point within said day.

The main problem was that Stiles couldn’t stand him.

And Jackson couldn’t stand Stiles.

And that was, apparently, made even worse with Jackson’s newfound werewolf-ness.

Seeing as Derek _bit_ Jackson and had unleashed the unholy terror that was werewolf-Jackson onto the world, Stiles still held that against him. If Jackson was a dick to him, it was Derek’s fault. If Jackson pushed him too hard or hit him and left bruises, it was Derek’s fault. If Jackson ignored him, it was Derek’s fault. If Jackson paid attention to him, it was Derek’s fault.

Basically, Derek should just accept responsibility for all of Jackson’s douchery for the rest of his life and damn him if he tried to get out of it.

And the boy wasn’t even in his damn pack so that should tell you how frustrating it was to be held accountable for another wolf’s actions when he couldn’t even order the Beta around without pulling out the intimidation tactics. And with this group of teenagers, intimidation only ran so far.

Stiles did not see it that way though. And his new friendship with Lydia did not make things better.

At all.

“Lydia, can you _please_ call off your boyfriend?! He looks like he’s about to pee on the couch in retaliation _and if I don’t accept watersports from Derek what the fuck makes you think I would from Jackson?!_ ”

Lydia didn’t even acknowledge either man, filing her nails with a precision that would make any girl jealous.

Jackson snarled, claws peeking out little by little until they were completely unsheathed and ready for maiming.

Stiles face turned a strange shade of reddish-pink, heartbeat racing not in fear but in pure, unadulterated _anger_. “Derek, make Jackson stop it!”

And there it was.

The ultimate showdown had begun.

“Jackson…” Derek growled out, eyes a blinding crimson red.

The claws disappeared immediately but the sneer settling over the blond jock’s face stayed put. “How cute, the Alpha male just has to put himself into it. Guess I was right about Stilinski not able to fight his own battles without the big bad wolf getting involved and fighting them for him.”

The pale-skinned redhead on the couch snorted, the nail file still scratching away at the sharp talons that Lydia liked to call nails. She didn’t refute the comment but neither did she back it up, obviously not caring enough to get all that involved but not wanting to get on Stiles’ bad side either.

It was obvious that she could care less about whether or not she was on Jackson’s bad side.

Stiles had appeared to be mollified at the disappearance of the claws but once the comment came flying out of Jackson’s mouth, the frown curled around the amber-eyed teen’s lips with a vengeance.

“Derek…”

The shape-shifter couldn’t win.

Ever.

“Make him shut up!”

“Man up and take it like a man, Stilinski!”

“Ew… what the Hell, Jackson?! The only person allowed to speak to me like that is Derek and if it isn’t guaranteeing me Sexy Times then NO. Just NO.”

Lydia sighed, still filing away.

Derek needed to take a cue and just give up while he was ahead. This was a rivalry that would never be diminished and Derek didn’t have the patience to try to keep up with the two idiots.

* * *

 

_Scott._

* * *

 

Scott was the biggest obstacle that Derek would ever face when it came to having a relationship with Stiles Stilinski, hands down.

If there was a Scott Pilgrim vs. The World friendship version of movie based on this fucked up life they lived then Scott would be the ultimate Boss Battle, equipped with shit that Derek didn’t even know how to deflect or attack.

Because Scott was half of Stiles’ world, the other half belonging solely to Stiles’ father, and that John-Stilinski-half was securely stationed in the ‘We Love Derek’ side of the tracks. Scott was obviously _not_ so mucha fan.

Derek couldn’t blame him. He knew he fucked up a lot in the course of their meeting till now. Derek had been trying to help in his own way but he had damaged whatever trust that could have been had with Scott in the process and Scott in return dealt just as much damage-

Maybe even _more_.

But they both loved Stiles and they both knew that Stiles loved them and damn it all to Hell they would get along _or die trying_.

The first time they had sat down after Derek and Stiles had, had sex for the first time (Oh God the Memories…) Scott had nearly torn the cheap table stationed in front of the booth they had all chosen for the evening, eyes bleeding a deep everescent gold at the onslaught of debauched-Stiles-smell exuding from said man’s body. Everyone at the table had ignored the sleazy smirk hanging off of Stiles’ lips and the smug look of satisfaction framing Derek’s face and instead focused on Scott’s rage.

“What are you doing?” Stiles had stated, face now a mask of complete indifference.

Scott had not been fooled, however. He let go of the table and blinked away the sudden attack-of-the-wolf eyes before they became too noticeable. The sheepish expression did nothing but highlight how cute the Beta wolf was.

“Sorry… I just, you should have prepared me for that, ya know? I can’t always control it when there’s so much _Derek_ hanging off of you.”

Stiles had seemed content with the answer but Derek was not.

The thought that Scott might secretly want more with _his_ boyfriend tickled the back of his mind, seeming all the more real the more the idea ruminated and expanded, turning into some kind of strange supernatural soap opera spanning _years_ in the making.

The Alpha wolf began to close himself off to his partner and the other pack, not able to shake off the thoughts of ‘Alone again’ and ‘I can’t do this without him, not anymore’.

Because Scott and Stiles would always be Scott-And-Stiles and their Epic Bromance was one that would always be a constant threat to his and Stiles’ relationship. And no, Derek was not paranoid, what the fuck are you talking about?

“You know you’ll always be my other-favorite Scott.” Stiles had chipped in before snuggling up to Derek, eyes radiating with not just happiness but satisfaction.

Both Scott and Derek could feel the love that the college student had for both of them but it would never stop being a contest of who could have the most of Stiles. Scott had his past but Derek knew he had the future and yeah, sixteen years of being someone’s whole world was a long time but Derek was nothing but sure of his position within their relationship. Stiles knew that Derek would never ignore him or abandon him like Scott had done, a trust so blinding that if you had asked Derek a couple years back what it would feel like to be able to rely on a feeling of reliance so strong that it was without a single tinge of distrust he would have laughed sardonically.

Especially if they had in any way implied for that other person to be _Stiles_ of all people.

But Derek wasn’t the same person he was when his family died or even who he had been when Scott had first been bitten and he was not that insecure.

That was the day that Scott had realized that he had to let go, at least a little bit.

He couldn’t keep taking and expecting to give nothing back to his best friend as he had been doing up until that point.

And Derek learned that all he needed to do was keep holding on.

Stiles, he knew, would do the same.

* * *

 

_Stiles._

* * *

 

At first, Derek had been resistant to the idea that the _Thing_ he had with Stiles was as permanent as Scott had insinuated the few times that conversation of their relationship popped up. The doubts of not being good enough had manifested into something much bigger and caused the first big argument in both his and Stiles’ relationship, building until Derek had finally exploded as he was prone to still doing.

Over napkins.

 _Napkins._  

_While in public._

It hadn’t been his best moment, he had admitted it when he had apologized (kind of) and he would continue to own up to it whenever Stiles felt the need to lord it over his damn head.

( _which was a lot_ )

That didn’t mean that it gave Stiles the right to call him Failwolf for the next month after, face full of smirks once the dust settled and the fight was finally no more.

Did Derek mention that his boyfriend was a dick? Because he was.

Really.

“I’m sorry.” Derek whispered once again, head hanging down and eyes trained on the floor, the ultimate sign of submission to another person.

Stiles however wasn’t a forgiving person by nature. Like in the situation with Erica, eventually Stiles could come to forgive but he did not forget. He did not repeat mistakes nor did he leave room for mistakes to be repeated by other people. His trust was not easy to break but once you broke it, things were never quite the same.

“Do you know how embarrassing it was to be escorted out of a building because my crazy werewolf boyfriend started freaking out over a shortage of napkins? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to show my face at that restaurant ever again. And I _love_ their chimichangas Derek. _They are Godly and made of The Sex_.”

The dark-haired Alpha cringed, already knowing that whatever Stiles had planned for a punishment, it wouldn’t be pretty. “I know. It wasn’t anything you did, I just couldn’t control myself anymore. I was… I was angry about something else but the napkins just _set me off_. I don’t even know why we needed more napkins, it just-I was so frustrated and all I kept thinking was ‘Why aren’t there more napkins, what if we need more napkins? Why isn’t Stiles more concerned about this?! We always need napkins with the way Stiles eats!’”

“You do realize that you sound insane right now, right?”

“And the thing I was really mad about,” Derek continued, not stopping now that he was finally letting how he felt come to light “I just thought ‘What if I can’t provide Stiles with everything that he needs because he always needs napkins and if I don't have them then what will he think? What if he really needs napkins because he spills something and I didn’t think to ask for some and he blames me for not thinking about it? What if he gets ketchup on his face and he can’t clean it up because _there are no napkins left_. I need to get more napkins, _now_!’ and it just turned into this big explosion of anger and I couldn’t _stop myself_.”

“So this is about you worrying about providing for me.” Stiles stated with a straight face.

“I don’t want to ever be someone who can’t give you what you need.” The smallness of Derek’s voice belied how the 24-year-old looked, rugged and menacing. “I never want you to look at me and not trust that I can provide for you when you need me most.”

Once the green-eyed werewolf saw Stiles’ arms come up and cross over his chest, he knew that Stiles was taking this in all seriousness. “You know I don’t think that.”

“But I do. And I know it was wrong to act like I did at the restaurant but I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.” Derek replied.

“Oh, you mean that you _admit_ to internalizing all your bullshit and that it _isn’t_ a healthy way to deal with your lifestyle and that it _shouldn’t_ affect the life you share with your partner who loves you and has to deal with your angsty man-pain on a daily basis? Please, tell me more about this Derek, it’s _fascinating_ to hear about you spout about shit I’ve already told you _isn’t healthy_ and more importantly _drives me crazy_!”

“I’m sorry.”

Stiles stared at the older man, eyes calculating.

“You’re an idiot.” The chestnut-haired teen in turn replied, shaking his head ruefully. “And I don’t know how I can be so in love with an emotionally-crippled moron and not be the least bit weirded out by your displaced anger.”

“But I’m your idiot.” Derek responded, smile not quite reaching his eyes but hands now wrapped around thin wrists and working their way up lithe arms. “And I’ll try my best not to do this again. Because you deserve better and if we have to fight, I at least don’t want to have fight over napkins.”

“Over _napkins.”_

“There are so many other things I can yell about.” Arms wrapped around Derek’s back as his own hands reached broad shoulders and pulled the beautifully awkward young man closer to his person. “Like sporks.”

“I like sporks.”

“Or butter knives.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“But you love me anyway.”

Stiles muffled his laugh against Derek’s neck, eyes glowing with happiness and exasperation. The argument was finally shelfed, though obviously not forgotten. It would be bypassed for now. “Oh God, shut up and kiss me before I remember how much stupidity was injected in this conversation, let alone tonight in general.”

Derek was willing to take what he could get.

And his stupid didn’t rival Stiles’ stupid when it came to being an emotional idiot so he didn’t feel too offended by the comment anyway.

 

* * *

 

_Derek and Stiles._

* * *

 

So they were two assholes in love with so much baggage that they could probably out-baggage most socialites ready to go on vacation for a week. Derek could deal with that. He dealt with the _Thing_ and that was a big hurdle to jump over but jump he did. In fact, he would describe it as more of a leap than a jump. Stiles put up with a lot on his end and he put up with even more from Stiles’ end but that didn’t mean that it was a hassle to do so. They were capable of taking shit from each other and did so wonderfully.

Derek watched quietly from his corner as Stiles leaned against Boyd’s shoulder and playfully pushed Erica out of his space. Isaac laid curled up against Stiles’ legs, eyes closed in slumber. Peter said nothing as the quiet clicks of his keyboard emanated from the table, clearly concentrating on the screen in front of him though Derek did notice the tiny smile perched on his lips as he quickly looked over at the couch the four teenagers were sprawled against, satisfaction radiating from his expression. He had not expected to feel this type of wholeness after his family passed away in the fire but here Stiles came to prove him wrong once again.

And the Alpha wolf couldn’t find himself regretting it in the slightest. He only hoped that he could give him back the same feeling when the time came for Stiles to need it.


	11. we're so miserable (and stunning)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So technically this is the final chapter, the next being the epilogue. 
> 
> Oh Shizzle my Nizzle. :0 
> 
> I don't know what to say except I hope you guys enjoy the last chapter! I definitely need to write something fluffy after this damn story is fully complete. Maybe something full of Derek's lifelong obsession with being such a failwolf ;p 
> 
> Let me know if you guys have any ideas! Enjoy!!!!

 

It was hard at first.

Trying to separate who was _Stiles_ from who was _Gwen._

Stiles wasn’t even sure if it was his mother he was trying to separate himself from or the monster that had taken her form.

It wasn’t that the memories had been fabricated; the troubling part was that they had not needed to be exaggerated at all. The problem was that he would now always come to associate his mother to that _thing_ and it made Stiles’ skin crawl even thinking about it.

So it was hard at first, trying to rediscover himself.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

It was just the beginning.

 

* * *

 

“Hey.”

Stiles blinked out of his stupor, body still sluggish and limp after the ordeal he had put it through. Three days had passed since the Fairy Battle of Doom (it sounded awesome at first but Stiles was now going to have rethink his ideas when he was recovering from fatal poisons) and he was still trying to recoup as much energy as he could, all with little success.

Scott stood before him, still trying to get his attention.

Stiles almost forgot why he had left his brain for a moment.

“Hi,” Scott greeted once again, dark-brown eyes wide with anxiousness “how ya doin’, buddy?”

“I feel like I was trampled by a stampede of werewolves and the left over flesh was used as a scratching post for vicious claws made of death. Otherwise, peachy.”

“Sorry, I… yeah. Of course you feel like shit.” Stiles honestly couldn’t say he felt _bad_ for his friend’s awkwardness but he certainly didn’t want to kick him while he was already down. And it seemed like he genuinely felt bad for Stiles’ situation… probably blamed himself for the majority of it too. Once again, Stiles couldn’t feel bad for that… mostly because it was at leasta _little_ true.

“I had this big speech mapped out in my head, ya know, kinda to show how bad I felt about everything but now it feels stupid. You know I feel like shit but it doesn’t matter cuz you feel like even bigger shit and I should’ve been there for you. I’m always up on everyone else when they need help but when you need me, I always fail and that’s, that’s not ok.”

Scott dropped to his knees, hands clenching the edge of Stiles’ mattress. “Derek was right to ban me from seeing you. I keep fucking up and you’re the one that get’s hurt for it. Who does that? Who just let’s down their best friend over and over and doesn’t get bitched at for it. Stiles, _why_ did you let me get away with that shit?! You’re the first person to let themselves get blown over, well, our friendship shouldn’t _be_ like that. You don’t get second place to everyone else all the damn time! It’s not ok!”

The bedridden teen felt his jaw drop.

Well.

This was escalating very quickly.

“You gotta talk man. And I don’t mean that crap you do when you want everyone to concentrate on something else. I know I fall for that shit a lot but only because you let me. You can’t keep acting like you don’t matter, Stiles, cuz you do. _You_ _fucking matter to me_!”

“I… I didn’t think I didn’t. Matter, that is.” Pale white hands wrenched at the sheets bunched around their body, honey-brown eyes looking at anything but the werewolf in front of them. “I just thought I didn’t matter _enough_.”

“Bullshit, Stiles. You and me, we don’t just disappear. Our friendship is worth more than that. I could never let you go to something like this. Not if I could prevent it.”

Stiles felt a piece of him that he had thought to have died slot back into place at Scott’s declaration. Strong fingers crawled over the mattress and met the still clenched digits digging into the sheets, gently prying them away from the soft material and slotted them together as if that was where they belonged.

“You aren’t your mom, Stiles.” Scott stated without the slightest bit of hesitation. “And even if you were like her, I still wouldn’t drop you like a bad habit. You’re my best friend. I was with you through the worst and I’ll stay with you even when we are both living in a retirement home and nobody else could deal with our crazy asses.”

Stiles didn’t have to fake his snort of amusement at Scott’s declaration.

Nor did he have to have werewolf super sense to know that it wasn’t a lie.

And that was when the 19-year-old adrenaline junkie knew that everything was going to be ok.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re mad at me.”

Derek felt his mouth tick to the side, hazel-green eyes narrowed in such a way that no argument needed to be brokered. It was obvious that he wasn’t happy. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. John didn’t say anything else, lifting his glass of scotch to his lips and savoring the burn going down his throat.

“I trusted you” Derek stated righteously, “over my own instinct. I trusted you and you steered me in a direction that almost killed my mate.”

“I know.” John muttered. “I thought that I was doing the right thing. It was just so-“

The silence became thick in the room, the Sheriff’s halted sentence and stiff demeanor bringing the conversation to an abrupt halt. The rattling breath he took before he spoke again broke little of the tension still hovering over the two men. “He looked like his mother. He acted like her. What else was I supposed to do? When Gwen got sick I told myself it would pass. I kept giving excuse after excuse for her behavior and I didn’t even think about what it was doing to Stiles.”

Derek knew that there was something he was missing here. For as long as he had been with Stiles he had never been told what it was she had or how it had affected Stiles in the way that it did.“I’m sorry sir, but what the hell am I missing? What kind of sickness did your wife have?”

“She…” John straightened up a bit and looked Derek right in the eye, not wanting the man to misunderstand in any way. “She wasn’t right. In the head, I mean. She was originally diagnosed with Depression when she was a kid but eventually they figured out that what she had wasn’t just depression. She was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder when she was about 18 but didn’t tell me about it until we were engaged.”

“She took all of her medication and went to therapy on and off so I didn’t really see anything being _wrong_ with her. She managed it really well until about the time she had Stiles.” Derek bit his lip, knowing that Stiles’ guilt had to come from somewhere. John knew it too, he could tell just by the way the man was hesitant to share even this bit of information with the werewolf. “All the medication she was taking wasn’t good for a baby’s development so she went without it during the pregnancy. Problem was that afterwards, she thought she could handle being without it again. She ended up being hit really bad with Post Partum too so that just made things even worse. She didn’t want to take her meds a lot of times and she didn’t want to see anybody but she kept at it and worked through it. I kept thinking that things were going to get better. She managed to take care of Stiles so it couldn’t be too bad.”

“I didn’t know, though. The things she was doing to Stiles. The things she was doing with her medication. I just-“ Here John felt his throat clog up with emotion, remembering how he found Stiles when his and Gwen’s marriage felt like it was finally breaking apart. “I don’t know how I could have been so _blind_.”

“Love will do that to you.” Derek responded quietly, remembering burning flesh and ear-shattering screams. “Love will make you deaf, blind and dumb to all the bad until it faces you head on… then it’s just all guilt and regret from there.”

“Stiles suffered from her abuse and he, he lived something that no child should live through. Something you might understand if, _when_ he decides to tell you.” John stood up, thoroughly done with the conversation. “You two have some more things in common than he might want to admit to. Promise me you won’t pressure my son, Derek. I think we both know he’s gone through enough.”

Derek nodded, quietly watching the burnt out father walk away.

He would wait forever if he had to. Stiles was worth it.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stiles knew the moment that John entered his room that he would have a lot to explain.

“Deaton explained some stuff to me,” John casually leaned against the doorway of his son’s room as the boy in question stiffened in his chair, the computer quietly whirring to life in front of him ignored the moment the words flew out of the Sheriff’s mouth. “What I want to know is why a vet would know so much about a poison that didn’t come from an animal and why Melissa McCall seemed to take his word like it was gospel.”

“I can explain.”

“Yeah, you can. And I don’t mean the bullshit explaining you’ve been doing. Tell me why you didn’t stay at the hospital if you weren’t cleared out. Why the _hell_ did I have to learn from Melissa that the doctor never gave you the ok to leave and that the stuff you were supposed to be _healing_ from was the shit that was making you all-“

“Like mom?” Stiles cut off. “Made me act like mom?”

“Stiles, all you had to do was tell me what was going on.” John felt his argument fall flat the moment Stiles called him out. “I would have helped you. You told me about all this werewolf stuff, why the hell wouldn’t you let me know that some freaky fairy-thing was attacking you? On a list of things I should probably tell my father about, that should be pretty high up on the list shouldn’t it?!”

“It wasn’t about you, dad.” Stiles’ face hardened until it became a blank slate. There were no visible emotions on the young man’s visage, hidden by darkened eyes and a straight mouth. “I thought I was going crazy too. I thought, maybe, that you were right somewhere deep inside me. I fought it but… I thought I was becoming mom too and that’s why it didn’t seem important. Obviously I was wrong but there’s still something in my head-“

Stiles knocked the side of his cranium, “there’s something not quite right up here, even with the poison gone. Something that was always there, even when I thought it was normal. I realized it with that thing in my head. Dad, you might have to. I mean, in the future, you may have to… do… _that_.”

“It’ll never get to that point,” the Sheriff sat next to his son and racked a hand through his loose brown curls “because we’ll do everything we can to figure out just what it is that isn’t quite right.”

* * *

 

It was true that Scott had been pigheaded before Stiles’ temporary stint with insanity and fairy gougings but after, he was sure that his best friend was probably sick of hearing from him, constantly asking ridiculous questions and inquiring about his health every five seconds (even though Scott knew he was ok that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to ask ok). Though knowing Stiles and his out of control pention for attention the werewolf was sure that he was making the college student’s day, millenium even.

“I should have listened to you.”

Scott sat up in his seat, so absorbed in his thoughts on what to text next that he didn’t notice the bulky Alpha werewolf in front of him until the words brushed past his consciousness and poked him to life.

Derek looked exhausted, much more exhausted than what he looked when they were battling the Alpha pack and it was no secret that Derek hadn’t slept during that time. The look on his face could be rivaled with what one would look like if they swallowed a lemon, obviously not wanting to spit the words out but doing so out of some twisted sense of pride.

“You had reason not to believe me,” Scott replied in his most adult voice “I wasn’t really acting like the best of friends. Even if I have known Stiles forever I sure I wasn’t acting like it.”

“I still should have taken what you said into consideration. We could have lost Stiles because I didn’t want to listen to you and that’s not ok.”

“I don’t want to lose him.” The older of the two wolves backed out of the room, not knowing what else to say. “Thank you for not giving up on him. Even when everyone else did.”

“No problem.” Scott muttered, his room now devoid of anyone else’s presence but his own.

Scott knew Derek heard him anyway.

* * *

 

Stiles hadn’t thought that his father would be able to trust him to actually make it downstairs within the first week of ‘rehabilitation’ (Deaton’s words, not his) but manage he did.

A flash of red was Stiles’ only warning that he was about to prodded, calculating green eyes narrowed in intense concentration as the terrifying woman that was Lydia Martin swooped into the Stilinski home without so much a knock and sat down across from the recovering college student in awe of her presence.

Stiles didn’t think he would ever _not_ be overcome with Lydia’s general veneer, a young woman destined to be larger than life and already well on her way there.

The sharp-toothed grin that the green-eyed terror gave the still-recovering teen did little to ease his nerves, the predatory gleam twinkling in those beautiful doe eyes giving Stiles all of the warnings. Warnings that he should be afraid _and oh my God, his body was NOT ready for this._

“I heard about what happened to you last week. Good to know how much you value my opinion when it comes to your impending insanity.”

Stiles was not amused. Nor was he very surprised that the she-devil knew about his past lapse into Bizarro-World. “Let me guess, Scott told Isaac and Allison who told you because my business is obviously not meant to stay between me, myself and I and you just needed to come and see for yourself just what kind of lunatic I’ve been lately. Well sorry, Lydia, that train is long gone darlin’.”

“I came here to commeserate with you, you idiot.” 

“Commeserate, _what_?”

“What it’s like to have your head fucked with without your consent dumbass.” Lydia flipped her hand behind her shoulder, smirking at the look of understanding that came over Stiles’ face. “I get it, even if everybody else doesn’t.”

“I don’t think what happened to me was quite the same as what happened with you, Lydia.”

“Oh really?”

“Well, nobody’s come back from the dead so there’s that.”

“Asshole.”

“Diva.”

“Miscreant.”

“Abomination-Lover.”

“I don’t know what you saw or what was going on in your head,” Lydia cut in before Stiles could bring the conversation to a substantial halt, his evasive maneuvers not effective against the ginger-haired vixen. “But whatever it was that you did see that freaked you out so much, don’t let it mess you up.”

“You’re not going to ask if I wanna talk about it?” Stiles asked nonchalantly.

Lydia gave a rather unlady-like snort, already “ _over it_ ”, whatever that meant in Lydia’s world of genius happenings. “You really think I care that much?”

“I really think you want to know but don’t want to seem like you want to know so you’ll act like you don’t want to know so that I’ll tell you mid-rant and you could lord over me the fact that you don’t even have to ask for me to tell you these kinds of things even though you really did want to know.” Stiles let out a quick breath. The words would have been easily said before Stiles had basically incapacitated by his injuries but the pressure of bandages over his ribs and still healing-scar tissue was not easy on the lungs and diaphragm, meaning Stiles was not as rant-friendly as he usually was. “So no, I’m not going to tell you but thanks for coming by and trying to interrogate me. Your methods need work but I won’t hold it against you.”

“You’re an idiot.” But she didn’t refute his statement so _Ha_.

Stiles; 1. Lydia; infinity times infinity.

He would catch up. Eventually.

“Are you going to tell Derek at least?” Lydia bouyes out, still reaching even as she pouts at the loss of information not freely given. “Or Scott? But I bet Scott already knows, you two are just that creepy that you know what happens to the other without having to ask. So are you going to tell Derek? He has to want to know. I’m surprised he hasn’t bombarded you with a million crazy-eyed stares full of creepy Alpha-ness.”

“I, uh, haven’t actually seen him. Yet. Since. Whatever.” Stiles clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

Lydia’s eyes gleamed once again.

“Oh, he hasn’t been here, has he?”

“Nope.” Still didn’t want to talk about it. Was his glare not up to par with Derek’s? “Haven’t seen or heard from him.”

“Because I’m pretty sure I saw the Camaro parked a block down the road when I was driving over here…” Both young man and woman stared at each other, reaching a strange stalemate. Lydia knew that as much as Stiles _wanted_ to ask for more information he wouldn’t and Stiles knew that unless he told Lydia about what he saw she wouldn’t divulge anymore Derek-related information, though she had to know he _wanted to know_.

They were now at an impasse.

“Must have been some other guy’s Camaro,” Stiles lied through his teeth, knowing that no one else in Beacon Hills had such a flashy car, particularly in that shade of gloomy soul-burning black. “Cause I haven’t seen Derek at all.”

“Hm.” Lydia rolled her eyes. The game obviously wasn’t fun if Stiles wasn’t going to play into it. “Well, if I see Derek I’ll make sure to badger him for you, seeing as you won’t talk to him even though it’s probably your fault that he hasn’t come by.”

“Hey!”

“Let’s be honest, Stiles. You’re kind of an idiot when it comes to emotional sensitivity.”

“Whatever.”

“Keep me updated, Stiles. And call me.” Lydia seemed confused by what she was saying herself but didn’t stop. “Just, if something like this happens again, just call me.”

“You too?” Stiles half-stated, half questioned. They both knew that they probably wouldn’t.

Call that was.

Though the fact that both were willing to answer the phone _just in case_ held a level of care that warmed both college students to the core.

 

* * *

 

 

Derek was sure that he wouldn’t exactly be welcomed in the Stilinski home with open arms but he honestly couldn’t think of another reason as to why his visit could be continually delayed anymore.

At first it had been about guilt. Then recovery. But almost three weeks and no word from either side?

This was sliding down Break Up territory and that did more for Derek’s gall than anything else. It overrode guilt and pushed past pain and settled right over his gut, ugly and corrosive until he broke and found himself in a very familiar bedroom with butterflies fluttering within his stomach and a grim frown settled over his lips.

John wasn’t home but that wasn’t important to Derek. Regardless of how their conversation had ended the last time they spoke, Derek would not have stayed away.

He only hoped that Stiles understood that he had needed time to sort himself out.

“I was waiting for you to come by.”

Derek spun around with a grunt. Stiles stood against his door, his left leg still healing from the new scratches that had been given to him after his third encounter with the insane fairy that had been trying to do him in. His upper body wounds seemed to finally be healing now that the coagulated poison had been pushed entirely out of his system but the new limp he strode with was something difficult to watch, the older werewolf knowing that if he had just been a bit more diligent that he wouldn’t have had it at all.

“I’m sorry.” The older man sputtered out, not knowing what else there could be to _say_. “I just, I’m sorry.”

Stiles gave the Alpha a strange look, a little weary but mostly frustrated. “You have no reason to be sorry.”

“I should have been here. I should have been taking care of you.” Derek grabbed the teen and pulled him down to the bed, ignoring the half-hearted protests with the singular focus that seemed to always get him into trouble. “I haven’t been a good mate to you and for that, I’m sorry.”

“Mate,” pink lips formed the words like a prayer, honey-brown eyes narrowed with pleasure “is that what we are? I thought we were just sticking to ‘boyfriends’.”

“You’re my mate because I said so now shut up and talk to me about what’s really on your mind.” Large hands caressed the svelte figure now lying on the bed, Stiles’ body moving in a reclined position without his consent. Derek couldn’t find it in him to really care whether that pissed the younger man off or not. “I know I probably have no right to ask. I know I’ve been a pretty shitty ‘boyfriend’ till now, but let’s cut through the bullshit and figure this out. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on until it was too late?”

“Would you have believed me if I told you why I was freaking out? Because you don’t get it, Derek, crazy runs in my damn veins!”

“ _Yes_.” Derek was firm with this belief. He had trusted John Stilinski because Stiles had not been forth coming with what was going on but he knew, he _knew_ that if Stiles had just come to him and explained… he would have believed him. Because Stiles was nothing if not paranoid and full of questions. Stiles was someone who would have been able to break down piece by piece what was happening to him, but didn’t because he thought he was the one that was wrong _and Derek knew that that was bullshit_. “I would have believed you, even if you didn’t believe yourself.”

“That’s stupid.”

“ _You’re stupid_.”

“What the hell, Derek, just shut up and accept my half-assed apology ok?!”

“Not much of an apology if it’s just half-assed,” Derek snarked back, hands now furrowed against short brown locks, tugging anxiously at the half-formed waves. “Your dad kind of let me know about what happened with… you know.”

Stiles did know, wide brown eyes locked onto Derek’s face with horror.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Stiles. I… I get why you didn’t want to tell me. I get if your mad at me knowing but I didn’t, _he_ didn’t tell me much else other than she was sick and you got the brunt of it. And I get if you never want to talk about this again but damn you Stiles if you think you can keep this locked away in your head and not count on me to try to help you through this.”

“It’s not about not having wanted to tell you, Derek. It was about me not thinking it was a problem. I thought I had it all figured out at first and that I was… that I was _fine._ ” Stiles shifted on the bed, the elongated wound decorating his torso itching with a newfound fervor. “I thought I had it all under control. But I didn’t. I was just hiding from everything and everyone; hiding from my dad, from Scott, even from you.”

“Why would you feel like you needed to hide from me,” the Alpha wolf sat a bit closer to his… his _mate_ , hazel green eyes narrowed with concern “you know I understand what it means to lose someone, even when that person has caused you pain and suffering… knowing that at one time you cared for them and how much it _hurts_ to admit it. I _get it_.”

“But I don’t _hate her_. I loved my mother.” Stiles leaned forward, hands fidgeting against the warm fabric of Derek’s shirt. “Derek, I _loved_ and _still_ love my mother. I can’t… I can’t _hate her_.”

“I can’t hate the woman who gave me life! I can’t despise the person she became or the things she did to me!” Stiles began to ramble as he cried into Derek’s lap, body convulsing with wracking coughs and sobs. “I deserved it, Derek! I deserved… I wasn’t _good_. Derek, why couldn’t I jave just been _good enough_?!”

The 24-year-old said nothing as he continued to hold the crying teenager, wondering what he could say to make this better and knowing there was nothing he could say to do so _._

Realistically, Derek knew that nothing he could say at this moment would make Stiles feel better. The blame was cut too deep for him to try to absolve.

Stiles was at his own mercy and Derek didn’t know how to make it all stop.

 

* * *

 

 

When Stiles woke up, eyes sore and face blotchy, Derek was still there next to him, eyes closed in slumber.

It didn’t change how Stiles felt but it made it easier to _feel_.

For all that Stiles helped Derek through his own personal Hell, he knew that Derek would do the same for him.

Stiles just had to _try_.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles bit his lip as he stared at the door in front of him, the sign mocking him.

_Martha Thoreaux, LCSW_

He knew that he had to do this.

It wasn’t like he still felt the flight of insanity that he had briefly indulged in via magic fairy poison but that didn’t mean much of anything to Stiles after the whole experience.

He had, had a brief glimpse into his mother’s world and it scared the _shit_ out of him.

More than that, it gave him a deeper perspective of his own state of mind.

And it wasn’t ok.

Derek had been encouraging the past week leading up to this moment, quietly slithering back into his life as if he had never left. John weathered the other man’s company, slowly trying to get back what was lost with both teenager and werewolf.

Stiles had not said anything else pertaining the near-death-by-carnivorous-fairy incident but both father and mate had known it was something that weighed heavily in his mind. He had chosen to do this without either man’s input but he knew they would both smile and nod, as if this was the right thing to do. He had consulted his psychiatrist about seeing a trauma therapist and the aging woman had already had a list of names set for him to see.

Apparently he really wasn't as stoic as he thought. Which wasn't all that much to begin with but now... well, his self-confidence had taken a hit that day.

So here he was, ready to talk to somebody he didn’t know about things that he had never spoken to anyone about. Not even when the social workers had surrounded him after his mother's suicide and asked questions about his mom and how her death made him feel had he spoken about what it actually _meant_ to him and instead side-tracked with subjects that made absolutely no sense whatsoever and rambled on about video games and super heroes.

This was going to be impossible. Horrendous. A travesty, this was a _travesty_ damn it-

“You must be Mr. Stilinski.” An aging woman about fifty-years of age opened the door, blond hair graying at the temples and dark brown eyes creased at the lids. Her hands were sturdy against the door, keeping it open without a bit of trouble. “My name is Martha, and it’s very nice to meet you. Are you ready for our session?”

There was no one in the room behind him, nor was there a receptionist in the tiny waiting room to try to signal that ‘ _no_ , _he wasn’t Mr. Stilinski what are you talking about?_ ’ so he gulped and, timidly, nodded.

He needed a release. A trigger to let it all go. Stiles gave the therapist the most sincere smile he could and felt his heart beat at a steady pace where it formerly had been pounding oh so rapidly.

When he took the first step inside the room, he finally felt like he could breathe again.

 

* * *

 

 

To Stiles, it began not with a crazy fairy bent on his destruction or the deconstruction of his psyche thereafter. Nor did it begin with a werewolf for a boyfriend and best friend, both of whom tried desperately to save him from something they couldn’t see, or with a father who didn’t quite understand why he chose to continue surviving in the supernatural world, as if the ‘real’ one was so much safer.

( _Though speaking as someone who chose to be a cop, he couldn’t really say he didn’t understand the need to protect or defend against things that other people didn’t understand_ )

It began, actually, with a woman, as most stories are wont to do.

A woman who loved him enough to try to take care of him, even when she couldn’t take care of herself. Awoman who had terrorized him as much as loved him, though of the memories that Stiles could remember the scale was probably tipped a little more than balanced in that regard.

It had begun with a simple understanding that not everyone was meant to be understood, even those closest to you. Something that Stiles would take to the grave, even when the memories themselves were tarnished and worn over time, forgotten except for tiny bits and pieces.

When asked, Stiles would respond that it had all ended with a smile and a whisper of a breath, hope tightly wound against the heart within his chest.

 


	12. epilogue: we love (our tragedies)

_“What are you doing?”_

_Stiles smiled up at his boyfriend as he laid the flowers down on the marked grave in front of him._

_“Laying it all to rest, just like I said I would.”_

* * *

 

 

John smirked over at his son and his sort-of son-in-law as they both held onto the other and giggled in their corner of the yard, the grill blazing in front of him and filled to the brim with cooking meat meant to fill multiple werewolve’s stomachs. Stiles had given him a look, knowing that John would have to cook a hell of a lot more in order to fill _one_ werewolf, let alone a group of them.

“Boys, food’s about to be done! Stop making kissey-faces at each other and help me!”

Scott outright guffawed.

“Shut up, Scott!”

“No!”

Derek rolled his eyes, pulling up next to the Sheriff without a single sass out of his mouth.

“Pack-mama, come feed your kids!” John jostled out, feeling the grin sneak around the edges of his mouth even as Stiles glared at him from behind Derek.

“Dad, not you too.”

“Son, I called it before any of the other wolves even knew you two were a potential _Thing_.”

“Oh God, not the _Thing_ again, what did I tell you and Derek?! The _Thing_ is not a thing! It is a relationship! Derek, take some responsibility here!”

“… Can I have some more hot dogs please? I’m almost all out.”

“Do I have no one on my side these days?” Stiles muttered as Derek walked back out to his Betas, refusing to answer any questions that would get him in trouble with either Stilinski.

John grinned as he flipped another burger. “Not really, no.”

 

* * *

 

 

_“I thought you already made your peace with all of this?”_

_“Maybe on some level, but I need this too, I think.”_

_“To what, remember all over again?”_

_“More like to forgive.”_

* * *

 

“I can’t believe Derek actually proposed.”

“Dude… are you serious? We were already werewolf-married, why the hell wouldn’t he put an official ring on it too?!”

“It’s the principle of the thing really.” Erica smirked as she slid in next to Stiles on the couch, taking in Stiles’ expression of frustration and Scott’s own mess of confusion with so much satisfaction and too much amusement. “Derek doesn’t seem like the settling type, all things given.”

“He is my husband and we shall be bound forever and ever and I shall be able to tap that whenever I want.” Stiles frowned as he stared down at his ring, eyes narrowed in faux-contemplation. “Oh wait, THAT’S A THING WE ALREADY DO. So there. Logic bestowed on you all!”

“How are you even real?”

“How are you even engaged?!”

“Why are you even in my house?” Derek bemoaned behind them, dish-rag in one hand and bottle of bathroom cleaner in the other.

“Jesus Christ, I am so not ready for this.” Scott muttered with a flop forward, head resting in his hands. “I’m going to be kind-of-but-not-really related to a Hale. What is even my life and how do I get it back?”

“You already are! We are already mated! Scott, stop having your existential crisis in my house and go get me some tacos!” Stiles snapped his fingers in front of his best friend’s face in support of his statement. “Extra sour cream es muy bueno, now go! Go and get me my tacos!”

Erica cackled gleefully as Scott got up and patted his pocket for his car-keys.

Derek was still confused.

Stiles was getting some tacos.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!”

 

* * *

 

 

_“Do you think this will help you forget?”_

_“Have you forgotten about your own tragedies?”_

_“…”_

_“I didn’t think so.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Derek stumbled over his feet as he made through the doorway, the silence of the living room not meshing with the still-fresh scent of his mate lingering all around him. Stiles was still home, he had just spoken to him after he left work and knew that the younger man had not been feeling well.

He wouldn’t tell the Alpha wolf what was wrong but the quiet anguish in his voice had set off all of the alerts in Derek’s head and caused him to rush through traffic as if the road was his race-track and Stiles was his living trophey. Derek did not have it in him to not panic when Stiles was uncharacteristically hushed. That only meant bad things in all shapes and sizes.

When he made it into the kitchen, a part of him wished he hadn’t.

“It’s her birthday.” Stiles whispered from the table, a tiny cake lay lit on the smooth wooden finish as the candle wick grew shorter and the wax melted onto the pastry at an alarming rate.

Derek didn’t say anything.

Stiles gently smiled over at him when he sat down across from him, quietly humming the Happy Birthday song.

 

* * *

 

 

_“I-“_

_“If you say it’s different for you, I swear to God I will demand a divorce Derek. A wolfy-divorce full of loud screaming, custody battles and complete chaos. Chaos everywhere.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Me too. You know the kids would be the one to suffer the most darling.”_

_“Stiles, stop being an idiot.”_

_“Nope, can’t make me.”_

_“God, even now you make things difficult.”_

_“You know you love me, baby. Now give me some sugar.”_

_“NO.”_

* * *

 

 

Derek had known the moment Stiles had entered the room with his ‘Srs Bzns’ face, laptop carefully folded under his left arm that he would not leave the room without wanting to bash his husband’s face against the wall.

He just felt it in his _bones_.

“So I’ve thought about it and I definitely want a puppy. Here’s why it’s a great idea.”

“Ok.” Derek quickly conceeded, hoping to cut through whatever drama his mate was already wading through.

“First off, I have a power point presentation. No, you can’t _not_ see it, it is mandatory and made of the win.”

Unfortunately Stiles was already seated on his ranting-train and nothing Derek could say at this point would stop him until he was either breathless or done with what he was saying.

_Why God, why?_

“… Uh…”

“Second, I have a dog whistle. You do the math. It will make you go ouchy if you try to move from this spot and make my power point invalid and/or do not conceed to my point of view of having said awesome puppy.”

“Stiles, I already said-“

“Thirdly, I shall also be bringing in the pack. They shall also give you reasons why getting a puppy would be the best thing ever. No, you may not move because item two: Stiles still has the magic whistle. Yaaaay.”

“I said yes!”

Stiles paused before he could continue on with his speech, fingers ready to dance over his laptop’s keyboard so that said power point could commence.

“You said… yes?”

“You can get a damn puppy, Stiles, power point not necessary!” Derek felt his mouth twitch into its habitual frown, eyebrows doing a strange dance over his forehead until they furrowed down over his eyes in victory.

“But… I worked really hard on my power point. It has zoomy-things and puppy gif-sets full of adorableness, Derek. _Zoomy-things and adorableness_.”

“Oh God, how the hell are we _married_?!”

“ _But zoomy-things are so zoomey! How are you opposed to this?!This is not right!_ ”

 

* * *

 

 

_Derek sat down with his mate on the damp grass, eyes shuttered with emotion._

_“It’s hard. But if you think this helps, I’ll be with you all the way.”_

_Derek’s fingers curled up next to Stiles’, the radiant expression set on his partner’s face worth the grass-stains now settled on his favorite jeans._

_“Then that’s all I’ll need.”_

* * *

 

Stiles felt a piece of himself he hadn’t known was missing crumble back into place, little by little.

Derek ran around their yard, shirtless as always, chasing after their chocolate-colored labrador with an excitement of a child.

“Daddy, look at me!”

The Alpha wolf growled as a tiny child of about four years of age tripped over his feet and bashed into his larger body head-first, laughing raucously as he did so. Stiles cackled uproariously from his safe spot on the porch, knowing that he would probably be the next target if he didn’t make it back inside in time.

“Daddy, did you see that?! I got Papa right in the legs, daddy! Wasn’t I so strong?!”

Stiles giggled again even as Derek glowered playfully in his direction. Throwing the small boy into the air as soon as he was caught, the green-eyed werewolf seemed to let the fake emotions leak out of his face and grin up at their son with such a tremulous sentiment that it shook Stiles to the very core.

Three and a half years they had had Lauren and it still felt like yesterday that he had been just a tiny baby in a crib, yowling up at them for attention.

He still didn’t know how they managed to keep him happy but they did.

And he was happy.

 _Stiles_ was _happy_.

It was a marvelous feeling indeed.

 

* * *

 

 

_“I guess this is goodbye then.”_

_“You’re not coming back?”_

_“Hmm… I don’t know.”_

_“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”_

_“I know.”_

_“Neither would your father.”_

_“Yeah…”_

_“Are you ok?”_

_“Like I said… I don’t know.”_

* * *

 

He couldn’t find in himself to hate her, no matter how much Derek frowned when he began to speak about the things she would do to him in one of her fits of mania or the neglect she would impart on him when she was particularly depressed.

Martha often said that he took a brunt of the blame to deal with the fact that blaming his mother would essentially be taking the control out of his own hands and giving it back to her, a thought so frightening to his own subconscious (as he had not control when he was so young to be able to defend himself against her abuse) that he created his own guilt and martyr complexes to help deal with the trauma.

Stiles was Stiles and Gwen was Gwen but Gwen was also _mommy_ and even with every single revelation that came barreling towards him or half-cocked idea that seemed to simmer in Martha’s mind, he had to gradually come to accept that her abuse hadn’t been brought upon because of anything he had done or things that he may have said. He had still endured the pain the memory of her brought him as well as hoped that she couldhave loved him. It was what kept Stiles going in the beginning and kept him going when he thought back on those times afterwards.

Derek couldn’t understand his situation just as Stiles couldn’t understand his.

There had been glimmers of love underneath all of the pain and suffering.  
Tiny sparks of warmth that he couldn’t let go.

Gwen could’ve been better. A _lot_ better.

But so could Stiles.

And if there was anyone he could be better for…

It would be for the children he would come to have and the mate he would _never_ stop fighting for. The family he would always cherish and the memories they would come to create.

He was, afterall, a continual work in progress.

 

* * *

 

_“So do you think we’ll be able to have kids someday?”_

_“I don’t know!”_

_“That’s your answer of the day, huh?”_

_“Mmm… maybe someday?”_

_“Yeah. Maybe.”_

_“Sourwolf.”_

_“Idiot.”_

_“God, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”_

_Derek chuckled as they exited the cemetary. Stiles casually placed his mate’s arm over his shoulders, face buried against the warm leather of Derek’s jacket._

_‘Goodbye, mom.’_

* * *

 

_“I love you.”_

_Gwen smiled as she stroked her belly. Tender eyes caressed the rounded bump that encompassed her mid-section and could do nothing but marvel at the miracle inside of her._

_It was hard being off of her medication but her psychiatrist and prenatal doctor were proud of her so far. Gwen knew that this would all pay off._

_And she was doing so well without her meds for the most part…_

_Maybe after the baby was born there would be no need for them at all?_

_Gwen gave her belly one last stroke and sighed. “If there was anyone I would want to be better for… I think it would be you.”_

_But that was a thought left for another day._

* * *

 

_fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue, otherwise known as THE FEELS EXPRESS. ;) 
> 
> Oh, hai there, hope you enjoyed the story. After the monstrosity that was this week's episode of TW I felt like this had to be written ASAP because if I thought I made Stiles suffer in this story THAT IS NOTHING LIKE WHAT TW CANON HAS DONE TO DEREK. Like, what?! I can't. I just CAN'T. 
> 
> Too many feels, so little time. :p 
> 
> Btw, if you're gonna listen to a song while reading this, listen to "Eclipse" by Evan's Blue. Just trust me. ;D
> 
> I figured the best way to end this story would be by showing you guys how this Stiles would cope with his trauma and how he would try to move past it; imperfectly but with perseverance, as most people do in life. He tries to love life long time. 
> 
> (ps my total headcanon for this universe is that every time stiles gets pissed off at derek for stupid shit or pretends to be mad anyway he demands a divorce and shrieks like a crazy lady on drugs lol and derek is all 'wtf stiles y r u doin this to me i just want to go to bed and snuggle and not be cute how is this my life?' and stiles is all 'lol u chose this failwolf' but when they are seriously arguing stiles NEVER says things like divorce because he is terrified that derek will actually want one and he can't deal with that ok, he loves his life and his husband and his kid who is like his mini-me but BETTER. he can't HOLD ALL OF THESE FEELS. stiles y u so contrary? XD)
> 
> Long note short, thanks for reading you guys! Hopefully I will be smashing your eyeballs with new TW fic soon!!!!


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